


The Fond Tale of the Sweet Nightingale

by Cerberusia



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-03 09:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15816210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: This was what came of not vetting every new hire personally.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have characterised this fic as 'a piece of total fluff that nobody but me will read'. Well, if you're reading this, then at least we've disproved the second bit of that statement.
> 
> I wrote this for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2018, the point of which is to write and publish your drawerfic. I originally meant to write something much more in the vein of a Harlequin romance, but then realised that I didn't actually want to bother with anything so high-stakes as a plot. "If this were a real fic, worthy of 20K+ words," I told myself, "all those references to Synchro Summoning would have to _go_ somewhere, and there would have to be some kind of threat to Kaiba Corp that throws the two of them together." Spoiler: this is not what happens. Therefore I was convinced that it would simply hang about in my imagination until I found a suitable outside plot to whalebone the emotional stuff; but then I realised that I could just type it up for IIBB instead, and feel virtuous that I'd done it at all.
> 
> So here I present the longest fic I have ever written to date, in my 13 years of fandom. It is not a wild ride of adventure and derring-do, but I think you will agree that it has other charms.

This was what came of not checking every new hire personally. Seto Kaiba re-read the characters of the name of Kaiba Corp's newest game designer in case he'd read them wrong the first time, but no: that name was unmistakably that of his old classmate, Ryou Bakura.

Of all people to turn up now...Seto hadn't kept tabs on his old acquaintances, exactly, but he had noticed when their names cropped up in the news or in conversation. Yugi Mutou was the rising star of the duelling circuit; Katsuya Jounouchi had been working in some trade for a year already; Anzu Mazaki had gone abroad on a scholarship to a prestigious dance school in New York; Ryuuji Otogi was still running the Black Crown game shop; and Ishizu Ishtar had been hired again as head curator of the Egyptian gallery at Domino Museum. Seto thought he might have seen her younger brother in the city once, which was an uncomfortable thought.

But there were others whose current whereabouts had barely crossed his mind, and Ryou Bakura was one of them. He'd been quiet as a teenager, always on the edge of any group. The only time he'd drawn Seto's attention was when the Spirit of the Ring had possessed him. Seto could remember well how the Spirit's rough manners and speech had seemed to deform Bakura's gentle features. But outside the circle of bizarre events that seemed to centre on Yugi Mutou, he drew little attention; girls found him attractive, with his polite manner and pretty face, but he'd never reciprocated that interest that Seto had seen. He'd been into tabletop RPGs, hadn't he?

And now he was here, working at Kaiba Corp. The only other person aside from Seto himself with the power to approve new hires was Mokuba, and Seto thought he detected his brother's schemes at work here. Mokuba still enjoyed spending time with Yugi and his friends, despite the age difference, and it would be just like him to engineer a meeting between Bakura and Seto.

But curbing Mokuba's apparently irrepressible urge to meddle in Seto's personal life could wait. Right now, Seto had to interview the newest employee of Kaiba Corp. It was normal practice: he met every employee face-to-face at least once, right down to the cleaners. He considered himself a good judge, if not of character, then of competence.

Bakura, when he arrived at the CEO's office, had changed little in the intervening years. His hair was shorter, but still long and unruly. He'd switched from a t-shirt to one with buttons, in deference to Kaiba Corp's minimal dress code, but kept his jeans and trainers. His face - pale skin, big eyes - seemed little changed from the slightly effeminate prettiness Seto remembered from high school. Put him back in uniform, and he'd pass quite comfortably for a second-year.

"Company Head," said Bakura respectfully, bowing. Seto waved him impatiently to a chair in front of his intimidatingly-sized desk. Bakura didn't look intimidated, which could be good - Seto preferred them with some spine - or very, very bad.

"My brother hired you," he announced, scrutinising Bakura further. "You're here so that I can decide whether I want to keep you."

"Of course, Kaiba-san," Bakura murmured. He didn't seem shocked or displeased by Seto's rudeness; he'd just kept to the appropriate level of formality.

"You have a degree in Game Design." From a respectable university, too. "Why did you apply to Kaiba Corp?"

"It's the biggest and best company in the industry." That was a sop to his ego - Industrial Illusions was Kaiba Corp's major competitor, and had some claim to both those titles. "I prefer the game design here to that of other companies, especially how it's turning tabletop games into online RPGs. There's space for creative expression in Kaiba Corp games."

It was a good answer. It fit with what he knew of Bakura, too. But was it _too_ good? Seto gave him a hard stare across the desk.

"Did you think that you'd have an easier time getting a job here because we already knew each other?" he pressed. There was little he hated more than people who thought they could presume on their acquaintance to get favours.

A faint smile flitted across Bakura's delicate features.

"Company head, if anything, I would have thought that might make you _less_ likely to hire me."

Seto let him go. Specifically, he told him to,

"Get out of my sight and start doing what I hired you to do."

So Bakura left, after bowing at exactly the right depth to his new boss. Seto settled back in his seat - intimidatingly large, like the desk, and extremely comfortable - and typed a note to himself on Bakura's employee profile: ONE WEEK. That should be long enough for a trial run. A week of immersion in Kaiba Corp's game design department should reveal just what the enigmatic Bakura was made of.

~*~*~

Seto went home at eight. He'd been known to pull much longer hours, but Mokuba demanded him home for dinner at a 'reasonable time' on weeknights unless there was a true emergency, so home he went. Gozaburo had been of the same mind as Seto in his work habits, and had stopped shy of actually living at the office only to lessen the chance of bomb threats. Therefore the Kaibas lived in an upmarket residential area of Domino, with grounds and fences for privacy, only a few minutes from the corporate district that housed Kaiba Corp.

They did not, however, live in the same house as they had with Gozaburo. Shortly after his adoptive father's timely demise, Seto had arranged for the entire complex to be demolished, then rebuilt to his own specifications. In contrast to Gozaburo's Western-style crenellated and pillared edifice, Seto had chosen something more in keeping with the area, in the traditional style but from modern materials. He didn't entertain clients or investors at home, as Gozaburo had done; it could be designed entirely to suit himself and his brother.

"I'm home," he announced, tossing his shoes into a cubby. The thunder of footsteps on the stairs announced Mokuba's entrance.

"Welcome back! I've done my homework, I finished the accounts you told me to in Chemistry, and dinner's on the table so let's eat!"

Seto couldn't argue with that. The housekeeper - the same one who had taken care of household tasks ever since Seto had inherited - had made oyakodon. They were mostly silent while they ate, if only because Mokuba was stuffing food into his mouth at too fast a rate to talk. Seto knew that, logically, he must have done much the same during his own growth spurt; but it was still a repulsive spectacle, and Seto politely waited until it was over before asking Mokuba about their unexpected new hire.

"I always liked Bakura," said Mokuba, unrepentant.

"He was probably the least objectionable of that whole group," Seto admitted. He didn't ask _Even after the Spirit of the Ring kidnapped you?_ Mokuba was remarkably forgiving of things like that. "But what makes him a good fit for Kaiba Corp?"

"You interviewed him this morning and I saw he was still around this afternoon, so I'm guessing he convinced you." Mokuba could be so _sly_ at times. Seto gave him a look over his coffee jelly. Mokuba looked innocent - too innocent. "Besides, weren't you interested to see Bakura again?" Mokuba asked, his dish already clean.

"No."

But he had been, just a little. More than interested - attracted. He'd noticed things about Bakura that he'd noticed briefly back in school, except without the teenaged erotically-charged all-consuming fixation on beating the Spirit of the Puzzle in a card game distracting him. He noticed and appreciated the graceful curve of Bakura's cheek, his long lashes, the suggestion of his narrow body underneath his clothes.

But that was just him being ridiculous. He'd decided to put such thoughts out of his mind years ago: he had higher concerns than adolescent attractions. So he found Bakura attractive: so what? It pained him to admit it, but he also found Jounouchi Katsuya physically appealing - at least, until he opened his mouth. It didn't have the slightest bearing on how he treated him, and it wouldn't change his opinion of Bakura. Bakura was valuable in his role as employee; nothing more.

Mokuba was looking at him skeptically across the table. Seto took the high road and pretended not to see.

"Still, it's good for you to spend time with him," Mokuba said decisively. 

"Mokuba, he works for me," Seto reminded him. "We're not going to be meeting up for coffee and a friendly chat." He left out that he didn't do _friendly chats_ with anybody except Mokuba himself. Mokuba still looked unconscionably pleased at the notion of Seto being forced to interact with those people who were nominally his peers, so Seto added,

"Let me see those accounts."

"Already sent them to your inbox," Mokuba chirped, confirming the origin of the ping from his phone just as they sat down to dinner. Seto had kept to Mokuba's strictures that dinner at home was technology-free. He understood that commonly it was the older members of the family imposing this rule on the younger ones; that didn't mean that he appreciated the irony. Seto rarely appreciated irony unless it was in his favour. Outmanoeuvered, he grunted in acknowledgement and returned his attention to his rice.

Anyway, he had more important things to be thinking about than his newest employee, no matter how good-looking he might be. Kaiba Corp was about to launch a new mechanic for the Duel Monsters game that should shake up the playing field. Seto had grown tired of always seeing the same handful of names ranking at tournaments, and the same metagame strategies being talked about and employed. It was time to introduce something truly new and exciting.

The whole thing was done with legal permission of Industrial Illusions, of course: no matter how much Seto would enjoy wresting control of the game from Pegasus' over-perfumed clutches, a legal wrangle between their companies would be very unpleasant and nobody would come out of it well. Pegasus and Seto had simply reached an agreement that allowed Kaiba Corp to use Duel Monsters trademarks in their products, to release the occasional booster pack as a joint effort, and now, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the game's release, to officially launch a new game mechanic that Seto had designed: Synchro Summoning.

Relations between the two company heads were therefore maintained at 'cordial'. Mokuba liked to refer to Pegasus as Seto's 'friend', but that was just Mokuba trying to tease him. Seto cautiously respected Pegasus, which was more than he would have accorded to most people.

He was still wary, therefore, of Pegasus' motives. For all Pegasus despised cheating in others, it was only because he himself was the ultimate cheat. Theirs was a good partnership, and it would go exceedingly badly for Pegasus if Kaiba Corp were to suffer a loss. However, to Pegasus, taking over Kaiba Corp (as what he would no doubt regard as a benevolent dictatorship) surely counted as 'acting in the best interests of Kaiba Corp'. He had admitted as much to Seto at a duel last year. So Seto, for all he did business with Pegasus and challenged him to duels and treated him as a worthy rival, was always watching for the sting in the tail. The last attempt Pegasus had made at a company takeover had been more than five years ago; but Seto knew well how good Pegasus was at biding his time.

Across the table, Mokuba had finished his coffee jelly - possibly without chewing - and was now watching Seto.

"Something on your mind?" he asked.

"Pegasus."

"He hasn't tried to have me kidnapped lately," Mokuba offered. "I'm sure he hasn't forgotten about you, though. Maybe he just wants to hang out with you in some way that _doesn't_ involve a duel?" He put on an expression of total innocence as Seto looked at him askance.

"I certainly hope not." Pegasus and he were not _friends_ who _hung out_ together: they were business partners and rivals. If Pegasus ever forgot that, Seto would be happy to remind him.

"Mm-hm. Well, I'm glad we got Bakura to work for us." This was a blatant subject change, but Seto took it.

"We'll see," he said, noncommittally. "We'll see."


	2. Chapter 2

Seto scarcely spared a thought for Bakura until the annual investors' benefit.

The benefit consisted of the great and good - or at least the wealthy - hob-nobbing and eating canapes at Kaiba Corp's expense, while being shown what their investments were being spent on. This required virtually the entire sales department to spend a full month planning it, and then a good portion of them to attend the benefit itself. But not all roles could be filled by sales staff, because this year the department had come up with the idea of having representatives from other departments, like visual design and game design, to hang around their work and not just explain it, but create characters and scenarios based on the suggestions and requests of guests.

In previous years, Seto had rejected such plans out of hand: explaining the technology and ethos was what the sales team were for. But the notion of having the designers create custom characters for the investors had caught his interest. The problem lay in picking the designers to work at the benefit. They were all extremely skilled and talented professionals, as was every employee at Kaiba Corp - and a large proportion of them were unwashed monomaniacal nerds. Putting one or more of them in a customer-facing role would have to be considered with great caution.

With trepidation in his heart, Seto went down into the bowels of the graphic design department. He emerged five minutes later, having picked Ishigawa and Moto, the two who had the closest things to life outside work and therefore had the best social skills of the lot. He then went on to the neighbouring game design department, with considerably more forboding. The illustrators, while perhaps a little too engaged with the attractions of 2D lust objects to truly pass as normal, could nevertheless be passed off as charmingly quirky. The game designers, on the other hand...

He flung open the door to their meeting room - and stopped. After a moment, they stopped as well. Fukuya and Hisano hopped sheepishly off the wheeled chairs and stashed their sword props against the wall. Takanoshi stopped miming - whatever he was miming, Seto didn't want to enquire. As one, the group stood to attention. Seto considered them with a jaundiced eye. There was, unfortunately, only one possible candidate out of the whole sorry lot.

"Bakura," he announced, "you're working the investor's benefit. The head of sales will send you a brief. Wear something smart."

Bakura's startled agreement followed him out the door.

And that, until the benefit itself, was that. Seto's path rarely crossed with Bakura's, as they each kept to their own workspaces. Nishikawa, head of graphic design, had only good things to say about the newest addition to their team in his weekly reports. Seto was so busy with all the other people and projects he had to supervise that he had no time to spare to consider an old school acquaintance. Why would he? He and Bakura had hardly been friends.

On the night of the benefit, Seto again had no time to think about Bakura or anybody else beyond the basics of their roles. He hated socialising at these things - surely Kaiba Corp's products and profit margins should be enough for these people - but his head of sales had insisted, politely but firmly. Takanoya was a sensible woman, not to mention possessed of a ruthless eye for business, so Seto had acquiesced. This also meant that, having willingly trapped himself, he couldn't even complain or refuse to go, no matter how much the benefit inevitably made him long for the company of a computer or two instead. He could at most vent his frustrations by beating anybody who was foolish enough to challenge him to a duel in the purpose-built duelling arena adjoining the ballroom; but unless an unexpectedly competent duelist turned up, as had occasionally happened, there was no challenge and little fun in it.

Essentially, he just had to grit his teeth and bear it, until he came up with a better idea and changed the whole thing to his liking. Since this hadn't happened in the past eight years he'd been running the company, he didn't hold out much hope of out-thinking Takanoya on this. Seto _hated_ having to grit his teeth and bear it. It was why he always planned to have the upper hand in any situation. His only consolation was that the benefit encouraged investors to part with their money and fund Kaiba Corp's projects, a thought which always cheered him.

The September night was warm, and the French windows of the ballroom were wide open, allowing access to the balcony. It was guarded on all sides, of course: Seto had too much experience of assaults, kidnappings and gatecrashing to leave that kind of thing to chance. At all times, he had an escape route to that balcony planned, should the _unfortunate_ incident from last year's benefit be repeated.

He prowled the ballroom before the guests arrived, overseeing the setting-up of the technology demonstrations. He saw Takanoya giving the designers their orders at the other end of the hall. Each had clearly dragged out the smartest thing in his or her wardrobe, which in Ishigawa's case appeared to include a man's waistcoat. Miraculously, no stain had yet appeared on it. Bakura was the neatest of the three, even though he did look slightly like a waiter. He'd even managed to find a hair tie, exposing his delicate features. He really was _very_ pretty.

Then the guests began to flood into the hall, and Takanoya gave the welcoming speech while Seto glowered off to one side. He was waving off an over-attentive waiter with a tray of canapes when he caught sight of Bakura again. His hair tie was starting to come loose, but he was smiling as a guest who had clearly already partaken freely of the wine explained to him, with large gestures, what he wanted from his scenario. At this distance, all Seto could guess was that it appeared to involve enormous...breasts? Bakura was still smiling politely. Whatever, the rest of the game design department had no doubt inured him to such things.

An hour later, having fended off what felt like an army of socialites, sycophants, and suck-ups seeking favours, Seto found himself at the end of the hall which contained the 'artists', all of them hard at work. Bakura, hair now definitely coming loose, was delicately dodging the attentions of a not-unattractive woman who was flirting with him quite unsubtly. Seto wondered if he might be playing coy; but after a minute of discreetly staring at them behind his glass, he ascertained that no, Bakura really had no interest in the woman and was mostly baffled by her attentions. The woman had presumably also reached this conclusion, because she withdrew with an affectionate pat to his arm and a moue of disappointment.

His view of Bakura was suddenly blocked by Gotou Awase, an electronics baron and one of Kaiba Corp's biggest investors. Seto dredged up his most civil manner and embarked on an in-depth discussion of the new holographic projectors that Goro's company were supplying for the latest generation of Duel Disks. It was the first meaningful conversation he'd had that night, and he was almost sorry to leave it to make his speech. Not completely, though: he never tired of explaining to his captive audience what great successes Kaiba Corp had achieved now that it had turned from arms manufacturing to gaming.

Unlike last year, nobody challenged him to a duel in the middle of the speech, which was slightly disappointing. Seto appreciated a dramatic challenge. It made wiping the duelling floor with his opponent that much more satisfying. Nobody even tried to kidnap Mokuba - but then, there hadn't been a kidnapping attempt for a few years now that Mokuba was big enough to make him a less attractive target. The speech went well, and the dramatic unveiling of Kaiba Corp's newest duel technology - coupled with the promise of an entirely new game mechanic - provoked rapturous applause. Seto left the stage in in a satisfied swirl of his coattails.

Instead, the unexpected excitement came at the very end of the night, as people were murmuring their excuses and goodnights. Seto, eager for them to be gone but aware that it would do Kaiba Corp no favours for him to appear so, offered his customary terse farewells. As he was generally regarded as a brusque man anyway, this caused no undue concern. A few of the older members of the party, who might have been especially displeased by this show of poor manners, recalled Gozaburo Kaiba's bluff heartiness that had camouflaged deceit and worse, and reflected that at least the younger Kaiba, for all his rudeness, was honest.

Raucous laughter came from the 'creative' end of the hall. Seto, tired and irritable, marched straight for the source of the noise. He would gain a great deal of satisfaction from throwing somebody out. Delivering a cutting put-down would be an excellent end to a very successful evening.

"I'm terribly sorry, I couldn't possibly..." That was Bakura's voice. Seto found him being cornered by a genial couple whom he recognised as the Hashimotos. He was in his mid-forties, a successful investment banker; she was a few years younger and sat on numerous boards and committees and got a lot done without seeming to do much at all. They were well-liked in the circles Seto ran in; Seto himself, who was only interested in them as a source of money for Kaiba Corp, grudgingly respected their ability to camouflage their ambition under such flawless masks, and for appearing so genuinely devoted to one another in a world of cold political matches.

They also had a reputation for luring pretty young things into their bed for a few nights of fun. Nothing that would ever be mentioned outright, of course; but it was generally known, in the same way that Michino's daughter's drug habit was known. Not by the papers, but by the people who naturally knew such things.

Seto knew of the Hashimotos' habit first-hand, because they had once tried their seduction routine on him. He had, naturally, rebuffed their advances; though not without a touch of curiosity. He was quite certain that they were trying a similar approach on Bakura, and were achieving limited success. Seto was vaguely surprised; they were an attractive couple, and the generally understood view was that their advances almost always succeeded.

"Hashimoto-san," he said curtly. Both turned their attention from Bakura to him - though Mrs. Hashimoto simply pivoted so that she could observe both of them. "I hope you've both had a pleasant evening."

Both demurred that they had indeed; and, recognising their host's dismissal, gracefully ceded the field - though not, Seto noticed, without first pressing a card into Bakura's hand. Seto suspected that the number on the card would not be be routed through a company secretary.

Bakura chanced a tentative smile at Seto, brushing away a loose lock of hair from his face - and then more guests appeared seeking to have Seto remember their faces as they made their goodbyes. (He would, though not necessarily in the context they might have wished). Bakura was summoned to confer with Ishigawa and Moto.

"Well," said Mokuba once they'd chased off the last of the guests and were overseeing the packing up of the most precious equipment - after an incident three years ago, Seto insisted on seeing its packing and replacement in R&D with his own eyes - "I think that went pretty well. Shame nobody exciting challenged you to a duel, though," he added.

"You read my mind." Seto had been hoping for a rematch with Pegasus. Beating his rival's wretched Toon deck had been the highlight of last year's gala. In fact, beating Pegasus had been one of the highlights of his whole year. Watching Pegasus try to be gracious in defeat under the judgemental eyes of a few hundred investors had been supremely entertaining.

Still, there was the satisfaction of a social and fund-raising event pulled off successfully. Takanoya and her team would all receive thanks and discreet pecuniary rewards.

Outside the glass windows of the ballroom, the heavens suddenly opened. Three staffers hurtled across the room to close the balcony doors before the rain could flood in.

Although drizzle irritated him, Seto enjoyed real rainstorms - especially from his current vantage point, that is, inside. The furious drumming of rain on the ground and the roofs and the windowpanes satisfied some atavistic instinct in him in the same way as a rocking cradle soothes an infant.

He and Mokuba supervised the conveyance of the precious technology back to R&D. Nobody made conversation with Seto glowering in the rear, which was as it should be. Seto didn't enjoy or even approve of idle chatter. Then, since it was midnight, he agreed with Mokuba's announcement that it was _far_ too late to work, and he _knew_ Seto had finished up all the current loose ends before the gala so there couldn't be anything urgent, and they should go home. Normally, Seto would have waited in his office for his driver to bring the car round; but, since they were already on a lower floor, he and Mokuba took the elevator down to the foyer to wait.

The slender figure in smart black and white could have been mistaken for a waiter - if Seto hadn't recognised that mane of white hair, now loose from its ponytail. Bakura looked up as they approached, bowed and murmured a polite greeting - and was promptly bowled over by Mokuba enthusiastically asking after his health, his mood, what he'd thought of the gala and so on.

"Please," Bakura demurred, "I ought to be asking you these things!" But Mokuba continued to press him. Seto had warned him against being over-friendly with employees further down the food chain, but it made no difference. It didn't help that several of the older employees remembered Mokuba when he had been in single digits, and still (Seto was sure) spoke to him informally when they were alone. It was disgraceful, but Mokuba was irrepressible. If pressed, Seto might even have admitted that his own example of refusing to bow to social niceties might have had some impact on the formation of Mokuba's character.

For lack of anything else to distract him, Seto listened to - well, overheard - Bakura's answers to his younger brother's questions. Bakura was well, thank you, and had found the gala very interesting (which Seto suspected was code for 'overwhelming') but he was now quite tired. He rented an apartment a couple of underground stops from Kaiba Corp, but was hoping for the rain to let up a little before he braved the dash to the nearest station.

At these words, a certain light came into Mokuba's eyes. Seto knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

"No."

" _Yes._ " Mokuba turned back to Bakura, who was pretending no interest in this sibling spat. "Bakura, you should ride with us! We can drop you off at your apartment and you won't have to get soaked." As if the universe were conspiring with him, the sky chose that moment to belch forth lightning.

"It's...not easing up," Bakura admitted, looking pained at the uncomfortable situation he was now in. Seto could almost see the cogs turning in his brain: get sopping wet and disappoint Mokuba, or stay dry but potentially earn Seto's wrath? He rarely paid much attention to the feelings of whoever got caught between the two of them, but he could appreciate that Bakura's delicacy of manners was making him go steadily, flatteringly, pink.

The car arrived. The driver, umbrella at the ready, got out to open the rear door.

"Get in." Seto stared at Bakura to make his meaning plain. Murmuring and stammering thanks, Bakura fled into the safety of the vehicle. Mokuba and then Seto followed. Seto pretended to himself that Bakura's charming blush had had no effect on his decision.

"Where do you live?" Mokuba demanded before Seto could tell the driver to stop at the nearest underground station.

Bakura named an area that was well out of their way. Seto remained silent while Mokuba directed the driver to a more exact address. The rain drummed on the windows of the car and overflowed the pavement gutters. The streetlamps cast a warm glow that rippled as the car passed between one and the next. A drowsy silence prevailed.

The whole evening had gone _very_ well, Seto reflected. But next time they'd do well to hire a few more professional duelists. There were plenty of hobbyists among Kaiba Corp's investors who would enjoy being able to modestly drop into conversation that they had once played Ryuuzaki or Haga. Maybe Jounouchi or Valentine could be diverted from their current careers for an evening. Seto had no intention of duelling any of them himself unless one turned out to be truly gifted: Takanoya in Sales had gently suggested to him that his habit of rendering crushing defeat to his opponents and then gloating about it did not make for great public relations; nor did it encourage his humiliated opponents to invest in Kaiba Corp.

Bakura got out of the car in a neat district of the city; not expensive, but nice enough that Seto was sure that his parents must be paying at least part of his rent. Perhaps he even still lived with them. Some of the buildings looked as if they contained family-sized apartments.

"Thank you very much," he said solemnly to both Kaiba brothers, and managed a respectful bow before he fled for the dry safety of his apartment building. Bakura's manners had always been good; Seto, being unfettered by such social niceties, could still recognise them as a weapon, and respected Bakura's punctiliousness.

"Bakura's a nice guy, isn't he?" chirped Mokuba, leaning back in his seat.

"Very," said Seto, in a tone not meant to encourage further discussion.

"You two could have been good friends at school."

"Now I know you're joking." Seto hadn't been interested in being good friends with _anybody_ at school, and despite Bakura's sterling qualities as an employee, a tabletop gaming nerd who kept getting possessed by an evil Ancient Egyptian spirit would not have been his first choice in any case.

Mokuba just looked pleased with himself, which meant he thought he'd won. Seto found it profoundly irritating; Mokuba knew this, which was why he did it. He and Bakura had little in common, and Seto didn't _need_ friends. He had Mokuba, he had the company, and he had rivals. Together, they made an emotionally and professionally satisfying life. Mokuba could try his friend-match-making efforts elsewhere.


	3. Chapter 3

Unfortunately, as if he'd heard Seto's thoughts, Mokuba proceeded to engage in the sort of friend-match-making that made Seto slightly nauseated.

He wasn't oblivious to Mokuba's manipulations, which barely even qualified as 'behind the scenes', but he preferrred to deal with such things by deciding that they were below his notice. Mokuba would get bored by his lack of reaction and give up soon enough.

What Seto was unwilling to admit to Mokuba, because if he did Mokuba would never let it go, was that while Mokuba was completely wrong about the possibility of friendship between the two of them, Seto had found himself _lingering_ \- there was no other word for it - over Bakura's employee profile when he did the annual check of the new hires during the previous financial year. It would be absurd to say that he _liked_ Bakura, or considered him in any more friendly light than a cordial working relationship; but he read through Bakura's scanty employee profile twice. It was ridiculous: he hadn't missed anything the first time round (he never did) and new information would hardly appear while he was looking at the thing. The washed out official photo in the top right corner, which usually made the employee look hungover, gave Bakura an ethereal air. Seto stared at it for a long moment - and then, irritated with himself, clicked 'next' with slightly more force than necessary.

It wasn't as if he hadn't been _attracted_ to people before. At twenty-two, he was just mature enough to acknowledge, in the privacy of his own head, that there had been a distinctly sexual tinge to his interactions with some of Mutou's little gang. At the time, he'd been sufficiently wrapped up in the matter of consolidating his grip on Kaiba Corp that he'd hardly had time to consider what aside from a spirit of lethal competition was powering his attitude towards the Spirit of the Puzzle and Jounounchi Katsuya - though he had realised that most teenaged boys' masturbatory fantasies almost certainly didn't revolve around viciously and effectively winning card duels. He did not condescend to describe himself as 'gay'; though, if it became necessary, he would be willing to use the term 'homosexual'.

He had wondered, once or twice, whether Mokuba knew. His younger brother hadn't tried to commend women to him by describing them as 'pretty' in years, suggesting that he had picked up on Seto's true lack of interest; but there had as yet been no attempt at fishing by attempting the same manoeuvre with men. Unless, of course, that was what the business with Bakura was actually about. Seto hoped not: the idea that Mokuba had recognised Seto's attraction to Bakura made the small part of his soul that could still feel embarrassment squirm.

Still, he found himself paying attention to and _noticing_ Bakura, in a way he didn't usually notice employees. He seemed to see Bakura _everywhere_. Perhaps it was no more than he would ordinarily see a game designer and Bakura's long white hair simply made him distinctive in the corridors or in a crowd; but, for all the time he spent doing things that should not involve Kaiba Corp's newest hire in any capacity, that silvery mane seemed to appear with almost preternatural frequency.

He briefly considered the notion that Bakura could be doing it deliberately. Then, when his intellect supplied the obvious answer that Bakura had no discernable motive for stalking him, he assessed the deeply disturbing possibility that Bakura was now being possessed by the returned Spirit of the Ring. That nobody had yet been murdered in a Kaiba Corp bathroom rendered this unlikely, though the prospect of the Spirit of the Puzzle also returning was -

Seto pressed his lips together. The return of the Spirit of the Puzzle was impossible. Seto himself had established that not long before he began attending university. His greatest rival was gone to eternal rest, and however exactly the Spirit had evaded death the first time, not even Kaiba Corp's finest cutting-edge technology could resurrect the dead.

So he dealt with the matter in the same way that he dealt with all emotional complications: he pretended that it didn't exist. Bakura continued to be a sterling and enthusiastic member of the design department - as Seto had suspected, he was one of those quiet nerds who could become quite animated when discussing their particular passion. And Bakura's ideas were genuinely creative, which Seto demanded of his designers.

"Bakura's spellcaster stuff looks really cool," said Mokuba over dinner one night. To anybody else, it would have sounded like a perfectly innocent observation; but Seto recognised the insinuating thread in his voice.

"Todou is very pleased," Seto agreed. Unfortunately, Mokuba seized on the next conversational gambit.

"Todou says Bakura is really into ghosts and spooky things." When Seto failed to respond to this beyond a grunt, he added, "Didn't he used to play an occult deck?"

"He did," Seto grudgingly acknowledged. He'd never faced it directly, but he remembered the Spirit of the Ring using Dark Necrofear. He hadn't thought about it at the time, but would have assumed that the Spirit had composed that deck; but unless his earlier theory of the Spirit returning was true, it looked like Bakura had already had a taste for the macabre.

It didn't matter, of course. All that mattered was that Bakura continued to produce imaginative and exciting material for Duel Monsters in line with the design brief.

Unfortunately, the universe kept throwing Bakura in his way. The flash of white hair in the building; the reports from Design, where the characters for 'Bakura' seemed to be written in a special colour so that Seto's eye seized on them; Mokuba's casual references to what Bakura had said or what he had said to Bakura, heedless of Seto's reminders of the danger of being too free with subordinates; and then the business at the museum.

Mokuba had suggested a trip to the Domino City Museum, which had another Egypt exhibition on. Seto had pointed out that he was quite old enough to go by himself, and that perhaps he might even _like_ to go by himself, with his friends. He hadn't mentioned any friends in particular, though he was sure there was more than one girl among them who would be especially pleased to be asked by Mokuba, who had, if Seto did say so himself, grown up uncommonly good-looking.

Mokuba, however, had reiterated that it would be nice for the _two_ of them to go, which meant that he wanted to spend time with his older brother away from computer screens. Since Seto would never deny Mokuba's desire to do 'normal family stuff', he agreed that it would be. Museums, while not his first choice of an entertaining afternoon, often gave him ideas for game development.

This was when Mokuba sprang the Ancient Egypt exhibition on him. Their brush with the land of the Pharoahs had left Mokuba with an interest in the period, and Seto with a throbbing headache and a sense of useless grief. Nevertheless, Seto ordered his driver to take them to the museum.

The last time he'd been to the Domino City Museum, it had also been for an exhibit on Ancient Egypt. The museum's facade induced a kind of deja-vu: a vision of the great stone tablet on which the Ishtar woman had insisted was written his past and destiny.

"The sun's really bright," Mokuba commented to his left. "I should have brought sunglasses."

"Don't you keep a pair in your jacket?" Seto reminded him. Mokuba shrugged helplessly.

"I took them out when I sent it to be cleaned over the weekend." _And forgot to put them back in again_ was implied.

Despite the prickling feeling on the back of Seto's neck, nothing strange occurred until he was maybe two thirds of the way around the exhibition hall. For a moment, Seto thought it was more deja-vu, or supernatural, or just his eyes playing tricks - but no, the explanatory text about the dig that had unearthed the latest artefacts of the exhibition did indeed mention a 'Bakura Shou'.

"Is that Bakura's _dad_?" Mokuba pointed at a man in the photograph of the dig below. The family resemblance was obvious. He even had long hair, though it was darker and sleeker than his son's.

"It must be." They both stared at the man's profile. Children and parents who looked like each other fascinated Seto. Sibling resemblances too, sometimes - he and Mokuba were clearly related now that Mokuba had developed the same nose and jaw, but they weren't especially alike. Seto had dug up a photograph of their parents some years ago, and had spent hours poring over it, trying to pinpoint the likeness. Mokuba had their mother's colouring, but they both had their father's mouth.

Some adopted children, he had read, felt deep anxiety over not physically resembling their adoptive parents. Seto had long been glad that neither he nor Mokuba looked remotely like Gozaburo: he didn't want to be reminded of the man every time he so much as looked in the mirror.

"So Bakura's dad is a...professor of archaeology at Domino University?" Mokuba was reading the small print beneath the photograph. "That's cool."

"Mm." Despite his own professional interests, Seto would admit that 'archaeologist' outranked many other options on a scale of how objectively interesting a parent's profession might be. Had Bakura senior taken his son on any expeditions or digs, he wondered? And what a coincidence that Bakura's father should specialise in Ancient Egypt. Perhaps this was how Bakura had come into contact with the Millenium Ring.

Mokuba, being Mokuba, asked Bakura about the connection the next time they met up. Though he was no longer an adorable child, Mokuba's native easy charm meant that he could get away with that kind of directness.

"Hey, Bakura!" he greeted him with obvious pleasure. "We were at the museum, and we saw your dad! Well, a picture of him, anyway," he amended. Seto shot Mokuba a look: that had been a deliberate 'mistake' if ever he'd seen one. And he'd got the reaction he was looking for: Bakura's eyebrows had first rocketed for his hairline, but then lowered.

"I didn't know your dad was an _archaeologist_ ," Mokuba continued. "That's so cool!"

Bakura smiled modestly. Seto thought he discerned a faint edge of discomfort in the tight corners of his mouth. Without appearing to notice, Bakura tilted his head so his hair fell a little more in his face.

"Yes, he spends a lot of time in Egypt on digs."

Mokuba continued to enthuse about Bakura senior's profession. Although Kaiba Corp had international dealings, especially with America, neither Mokuba nor Seto were especially well-travelled outside Japan. Egypt must seem very exotic to Mokuba. Seto made a note to plan some kind of international vacation for Mokuba's next birthday. Europe, maybe.

"...But I'm distracting you, right? The section chief probably sent you for something."

"Nothing urgent," said Bakura, after a brief expression of panic that suggested to Seto that it probably _had_ been urgent. "I'll get back to that, thank you, vice president." And he hurried away down the corridor with almost unseemly haste.

"Guess it probably was urgent, then," said Mokuba as they watched Bakura's rapidly retreating back.

"Probably," Seto agreed. "Honestly, Mokuba, how are we meant to get things done around here if you harass my employees into small talk?"

" _Our_ employees," Mokuba corrected him, unrepentant.

Back in his office at the top of Kaiba Corp, Seto looked up Bakura Shou. Newspaper and journal articles came up, as well as a few books with titles like _Predynastic Egyptian Pottery_ and _The Monuments of Seti I: Epigraphic, Historical and Art Historical Analysis_. Seto started with the newspapers and found minimal biographical detail beyond his university affiliation. The journal articles included references to colleagues, which was more promising. And then finally, Seto struck gold with the Acknowledgements pages in Bakura's books. _Predynastic Egyptian Pottery_ included at the end of the acknowledgements:

_Great thanks to my wife Asako for typing this manuscript, and for looking after little Amane and Ryou._

Amane? Bakura had a sister? Seto racked his brains for any mention of a sister, or indeed a sibling at all. Not all pairs of siblings were as attached as he and Mokuba were, of course, but something about this felt strange. He flipped back to the beginning. The dedication was _For Asako, Amane and Ryou_. He checked the book about Seti I.

_For Ryou_.

The acknowledgements page similarly contained only one personal reference, at the end:

_With thanks to my little son Ryou, who always shows great interest in what Daddy is writing about now._

There were several years between the dates of publication - the book on the Pharoah came after the one on pottery. Had there been a divorce and a splitting of the siblings? Seto had always considered the idea of each parent taking a child cruel. He searched for 'Bakura Amane'. A few hits, but none of them relevant. Wherever she was, she wasn't on the internet. Some people still left minimal online footprints; perhaps she was one of them.

'Bakura Asako', however, produced no direct reference to the woman herself, but an article about her older sister, who was apparently a professional ikebana artist. The woman in the picture did have something of her nephew in her face, Seto thought. He skimmed the article: flowers, flowers, shallow philosophy, more flowers - and, in the middle of the shallow philosophy, a mention of her deceased younger sister, Asako.

Well, that would explain her sudden absence in her husband's acknowledgements. But what about Amane?

Before Seto could demand that Kaiba Corp's more _specialised_ employees start digging into pre-digitalisation newspaper reports, or indeed ask himself why he was so interested in the fate of Bakura's mother and sister in the first place, Mokuba entered. Without knocking, as was his wont. Seto looked up from his computer with as much annoyance as he could muster. He could have sworn that Mokuba had once had manners.

"Pegasus had his thugs try to kidnap me, but it turns out he just wants to duel you," he announced cheerfully. "I think maybe he's lonely."

" _Excellent._ " It had been a while since Pegasus had last thrown down the gauntlet: Seto had been starting to wonder whether his business rival had lost interest. It had stung more than he would admit. "Did you use that ju-jitsu throw I taught you?"

"Of course," said Mokuba, proudly. "I can get out of just about any hold now!" And then deck his attacker - at eighteen, Mokuba was nearly as tall as Seto himself, and had been taking judo lessons for eight years. The kidnapping attempts had correspondingly tapered off through his teenaged years. Seto favoured his younger brother with an affectionate look; Mokuba, seeing Seto's stern countenance soften, smiled back. He had exceptionally long, sooty eyelashes, which increased his resemblance to their mother.

"Has he set a date and time, or am I just meant to show up in a helicopter whenever? I know he likes me to play up to his theatrics."

Mokuba had more tact than to tell Seto that he was just as inclined to dramatics as Pegasus, if not more; though Seto could see him thinking it, opening his mouth, and then closing it again.

"They didn't give specifics," he said after a moment. "So helicopter away at your convenience, I guess."

Satisfied, Seto sent an order for a Kaiba Corp helicopter to fly him to Pegasus' house the next day. It was the best way to approach the ridiculous thing anyway.

The prospect of duelling Pegasus into a greasy smear on his absurd pink carpet buoyed his spirits all through the rest of the day. Of course, there was a good chance that Pegasus was thinking the same about Seto. Pegasus _had_ beaten him twice in the past four years - but only twice. Seto was the indubitable overall winner of their ongoing rivalry, by a long shot. It kept things exciting: the memory of those two losses added a _frisson_ to the duel. Seto was good, damn good, but Pegasus still kept him on his toes.

Their rivalry also fed other things in him. The year before, Pegasus had come upon Seto in the cloakroom at a function and said some things which could, especially given that he was leaning in so close that Seto could feel his body heat through his suit, have been interpreted as suggestive. Seto hadn't quite decided whether he was being propositioned or not before the door opened and a couple - the Tachibanas, Seto would always remember that now - entered to fetch their coats. Pegasus had slipped away wearing his mink-trimmed coat and a sly smile.

Every duel since therefore reminded Seto of that encounter. The cloakroom had been dark and filled with coats, bags, umbrellas. Pegasus had been standing very close to him, close enough for Seto to smell his cologne - woody, spicy, expensive. His one visible eye had looked Seto up and down as if assessing him for something that Seto hadn't understood at the time. Seto often thought about that private, liminal space the darkness had afforded them, and what Pegasus might have done if Seto had accepted his offer.

Seto won the duel, of course. Pegasus brought out Blue Eyes Toon Dragon to taunt him, but Seto's Enemy Controller gave him the satisfaction of both seeing an enemy's monster turn on them, and a Blue Eyes rightfully under his control. Pegasus was, as ever, gracious in defeat, though nowhere near resigned.

"Please, stay for a glass of something," he insisted. As usual, Seto did. It was a good opportunity to get intel on Industrial Illusions, provided that he was willing to volunteer a little in return.

"So, I hear you've managed to lure in Bakura Ryou," Pegasus began in a conversational manner, pouring plum wine into a tall glass. Seto, to his own chagrin, couldn't claim to have a sophisticated palate: he hated virtually all spirits, and preferred his drinks to taste as non-alcoholic as possible. He suspected that Pegasus, who was known as something of a whisky conoisseur, found this very entertaining.

"I had nothing to do with it," said Seto dismissively. "He approached the company. Why are you interested?"

"In his second year of university, he won a character design competition run by Industrial Illusions." Pegasus handed him the glass. "I did offer him a job once he'd graduated, but it seems he's spurned me in favour of you." He sat down in his own chair and leaned forward, confidentially. "Perhaps my face brought up unpleasant memories of that business with the Millenium items..."

Seto's gaze went to the hair that still hid Pegasus' right eye; now plain glass, rather than a cursed Egyptian artefact. He'd never enquired about how the Millenium Eye had passed from Pegasus' eye socket to the Sprit of the Ring's collection in time for his confrontation with the Spirit of the Puzzle in Egypt; he didn't, in fact, discuss that whole episode with anybody. But he was able to look at the facts - that the Spirit had the Eye, that Pegasus would not have given it up willingly, that the Spirit was a vengeful sadist - and draw some very unpleasant conclusions.

Yes, maybe the idea of working with Pegasus _had_ brought up unpleasant memories for Bakura.

"Such a shame to lose talent to the competition," Pegasus was saying. Now that Seto thought about it, he had read that note about the design competition in Bakura's employee profile. Mokuba had no doubt assessed the entry as well before hiring him.

"That rarely happens to Kaiba Corp," answered Seto, and settled back to enjoy Pegasus' faux-outrage at his arrogance. He should find that competition entry himself. Industrial Illusions had a different take on the game than Kaiba Corp, but if Pegasus had liked it that much, it might indicate something about his rival's future creative direction.

What he couldn't know was that this plan would have to be delayed: because on his helicopter flight back to Domino, he saw a thin plume of smoke rising above the city.


	4. Chapter 4

For one heart-stopping moment, Seto thought it was Kaiba Corp. He'd fended off so many threats to the company, and now, while he was away - blazing anger gripped his chest.

But no: the smoke wasn't rising from the KC tower, or the business district at all; as they flew closer, Seto saw that it was coming from a residential area a ward or two away. Did they have warehouses in that area? Seto whipped out his phone - one of the new 'smartphones', with a touchscreen interface - and called Mokuba.

"Hello, Kaiba Home for the Criminally Insane," Mokuba answered cheerfully. "How did your duel with Pegasus go?"

"Does that fire put any of our warehouses at risk?" Seto demanded. They were getting closer, but he couldn't yet see well enough to be sure exactly how far the fire had spread.

"None," Mokuba assured him. "The nearest warehouse is several kilometres away." There was the sound of tapping keys down the line. "The news says it's not a big fire. It looks like it started in a ground floor apartment and worked its way up."

"Good." The helicopter was almost at Kaiba Corp now. Seto picked up his briefcase. "I'll be with you in fifteen minutes."

"Uh-huh." More tapping. "I'll see you - oh. Ohhhhh."

"What?"

"Bad news: that's the area of town that Bakura lives in. I thought I remembered him telling us the ward when we took him home...He's fine, obviously, but if his apartment was damaged...I'll go and talk to him, bye!"

_Click._ Seto put his phone back in his pocket. Bakura's apartment, or more likely his father's, was possibly among those currently being doused with water by the fire brigade's finest.

He didn't let himself think as he took out his phone again and typed rapidly on the touchscreen keyboard: _If his apartment has been affected, arrange accomodation for him._

It was no less that he would have done for other employees, he told himself, as he sent the text to Mokuba. Kaiba Corp had a professional obligation towards its staff. The fact that he knew Mokuba would have done it anyway, without being told - well, a reminder couldn't hurt.

The helicopter landed on the Kaiba Corp roof five minutes later. Seto took the lift down to his office, and spent a minute watching the thin wisps of smoke curling in the sky. The fire must be out by now: this was only a low smoulder. Mokuba had said that it had started on the ground floor and worked its way up; he caught himself wondering which floor Bakura lived on.

He didn't even know whether Bakura's apartment block had been affected at all, Seto reminded himself. But it was no bad thing to be prepared.

He put the news on in the background as he read through the latest spreadsheet of figures, but nothing more was reported about the fire.

It was late, nearly dinner time when Seto left the office. The lights were on when Seto's car pulled up to the house. Mokuba must already be back. Seto dismissed his driver and let himself in through the elaborate though subtle electronic security. He entered to the sound of voices - not unusual, as Mokuba liked to chat with their housekeeper. As he pulled off his shoes, he was able to pick out Mokuba's voice, and that of Tsuchiyo-san. But there was another voice too, a gentle androgynous voice. Had Mokuba brought a friend home from school? He'd never done before, but perhaps one of the girls who was always making eyes at him had managed to get herself invited home for dinner. If so, Seto was prepared to tolerate the intrusion into his privacy for her sheer chutzpah.

But as he padded down the corridor, the voices became clearer - and Seto realised that Mokuba definitely had not brought a girl home, because that was _Bakura's_ voice.

He opened the kitchen door to a picture of cozy domesticity. Tsuchiyo-san was ladling food into dishes, Mokuba was setting the table, and Bakura was standing by the wall, looking like he'd offered to help, been rebuffed, and was now trying not to get in the way.

He turned at the sound of Seto entering the kitchen, and his expression changed to that of a child with a guilty conscience.

"Mokuba, when I said I wouldn't mind if you brought friends home from school if you asked first, this wasn't exactly what I meant." Bakura looked even guiltier. Mokuba just turned to him with a sunny smile.

"Welcome back, big bro! It turns out the fire started in a building adjacent to Bakura's. His apartment isn't too bad, but it's all kind of smoky, and the fire crew said everybody should leave while they fix up the building. And you said that if Bakura's apartment was affected, I should arrange accomodation for him, so..." He trailed off with an eloquent shrug that perfectly conveyed _Your intructions were vague so I went and did what I felt like._ It was a shrug with which Seto was very familiar. "It's just for a week. I'm sure you and Bakura have lots to catch up on!"

Judging by Bakura's slightly panicked expression, he was as alarmed by the prospect of 'catching up' as Seto was.

"Please, company head, I don't want to be troublesome..." he began.

Seto held up a hand.

"Let's eat," he announced. Bakura, recognising this as acquiesence, left off his polite protests and went back to anxiously asking if there was _anything_ he could do to help, really, this was so kind of the vice-president...

One thing that Seto hadn't remembered about Bakura - or perhaps he'd just never known - was his appetite. Tsuchiyo-san, who had been known to deplore, in the politest tones, Seto's minimal appetite and lack of interest in food, would have shed a tear of joy to see Bakura's enthusiasm for her cooking. His table manners were, of course, impeccable; but the speed at which he hoovered up the dishes on offer was impressive and slightly alarming. Seto, who was eating at a more decorous rate and quantity, simply pretended that other people's eating habits were beneath his notice.

"Hungry?" Mokuba teased Bakura, who paused in more-or-less gracefully shovelling food into his mouth to reply,

"Yes, sorry - after all that business with the Ring, I did develop quite an appetite, and it's never quite gone away."

Then he returned his attention to his plate, leaving Seto and Mokuba to look at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Neither knew quite what to make of the casual reference to their shared history. Mokuba settled for a vague,

"Is that so?"

After dinner, as Bakura had very politely insisted on helping Tsuchiyo-san clear up, Seto and Mokuba withdrew to the living room.

"To our _house_?" Seto demanded, but without heat.

"Like I said, you can catch up. " Mokuba was unrepentent, as Seto knew he would be. Seto weighed the benefits of reminding Mokuba that Bakura was their employee, that Seto had barely known him at school, that Mokuba should have asked...against the fact that Mokuba knew all of that already and had invited Bakura to stay anyway.

Seto narrowed his eyes at his younger brother. This looked dangerously like a half-baked plan to encourage Seto to have 'friends'. Or possibly, Seto thought with an edge of discomfort, more than 'just friends'. The notion that Mokuba might have realised that he was attracted to Bakura, even though Seto had been careful not to treat him differently to any other employee or show any outward sign of his interest, unnerved him, mainly because he couldn't work out whether or not this had happened. Normally, Mokuba would just have asked a delicate question straight out: _Bro, are you into Bakura?_ or _Do you think Bakura's good-looking?_ The idea of Mokuba having suddenly learnt the art of subterfuge so well that he could fool Seto was frankly worrying.

Also, thankfully, unlikely. Seto settled for giving his younger brother a stare that said _I know what you're up to_ , before excusing himself to his study. Mokuba was more than capable of entertaining their guest by himself.

Bakura's sudden and unexpected introduction to their house had thrown Seto into disarray. None of this showed on the outside, either in his conduct or his appearance, but as he scrolled through e-mails and spreadsheets, instead of enjoying the memory of Pegasus' defeat at his hands earlier that day, he was preoccupied with new possibilities.

It wasn't that Seto didn't fantasise: he had a vivid and inventive imagination, as befitted a creative company director. As a child, he had fantasised about many things, most of which he had now achieved. He had fantasised of how to outscheme Gozaburo long before he had actually carried out his plan. And he fantasised about many other things in his day-to-day life, as a way to plan for new events. To Seto, imagination was a form of hypothesis.

He was not accustomed, however, to fantasising about things that he had already decided not to do. He had decided from the moment he had laid eyes on Bakura Ryou again that he would not demonstrate any interest in him beyond that of employer in employee. As far as he was concerned, Bakura was a brain, an imagination. His physical body, provided that it was in good health, was of no concern to him.

Unfortunately, although he had told himself this, he still found himself thinking of Bakura in very physical terms indeed. It embarrassed him slightly, an emotion he was not accustomed to experiencing. There was nothing shameful about experiencing sexual desire; but the strength of his interest in not only Bakura's appearance but also his life, suggested something closer to an adolescent crush of the sort Seto had thought he'd grown out of.

And now Bakura was in his house, no doubt assigned the room just two doors from Seto's own bedroom. Mokuba, of course, would want to encourage the two of them to spend time together. Short of sleeping at Kaiba Corp, as he had done in the early days, there would be no escape from Bakura's presence.

The prospect annoyed him and thrilled him in equal measure. He didn't want to foster this useless attachment to Bakura: it would only be troublesome in the future. But there was no way in which he could extricate himself from this uncomfortable situation without either upsetting Mokuba or revealing too much to him.

His thoughts were going round and round, uselessly. Irritated, Seto pushed the problem to the back of his mind to fulminate on later, and thought instead of Pegasus. The outcome of their duel had been most satisfying, and his victory made sweeter by his taking control of the Toon Blue Eyes White Dragon. Even in a debased form, the Blue Eyes was rightfully his. Something in his soul thrilled whenever he summoned it. The entire Ancient Egyptian escapade had been like a fever-dream, one that Seto preferred to avoid thinking about; but he secretly liked the idea that he'd known the Blue Eyes in a past life, and - even more secretly - that the Blue Eyes had the same regard for him as he did for it.

Thinking of Pegasus made him recall their conversation - which had, of course, been about Bakura. Everything seemed to come back to Bakura these days. Seto enjoyed the thought of having a designer who'd won a competition run by Industrial Illusions come to work at Kaiba Corp instead. It was a gentlemanly but deeply satisfying way to get one over on Pegasus.

As for the competition in question...

Seto's home computer system wasn't part of the Kaiba Corp network, but Seto was the only person apart from Mokuba who had the necessary passwords and account permissions for remote access. He'd learnt his lesson from his fight with the Big Five. It was the work of a moment to find Bakura's employee profile, and to scroll down to the notes section where Mokuba had recorded his victory in the design competition run by Industrial Illusions. Seto scrolled further to the 'documents' section: surely his application had included...? Yes, yes it had. Seto opened the file.

The design had certain similarities to Bakura's current work, showing consistency of theme and preoccupations. It was a spellcaster that altered the attack and defense points of other monsters, boosting those of Dark attribute monsters and decreasing those of Light monsters. If the card was destroyed by battle, the player could draw another Dark monster with three stars or below. The card itself was an average four star monster, neither weak nor strong, though with better defense than most. It would be a perfect addition to the kind of deck that Bakura played - or had the last time Seto had seen him duel, at least. In fact, now he thought about it, he'd never seen Bakura himself duel: it had always been the Spirit of the Ring using his body.

The visual design seemed to be inspired by a holy man, and vaguely Christian - it was called 'Hierophant', whatever that was. It showed an elderly man with long hair and a beard stretching almost to the floor, carrying a staff. The floor beneath his feet was chequered like a chess board, and there were items in the background that Seto suspected were symbolic - chalices, swords. Bakura's drawing was serviceable and neat, but there was something slightly sinister about it that Seto couldn't put his finger on.

It wasn't flashy or overpowered or elaborate: it was, as the notes written in Pegasus' typically florid hand (making it more difficult for Seto to read the English; Seto was tempted to suspect him of doing it on purpose) put it, a genuinely useful card that added to the strategy of the game, and especially strengthened Spellcaster and Dark-themed decks. At the time Bakura had submitted this design, Seto recalled, Kaiba Corp had been about to launch more support for Spellcaster decks in particular. In fact, they'd released a card reasonably similar to this one, that specifically boosted the attack of all other Spellcasters on the field.

It wasn't avant-garde or a game-changer, though some of Bakura's current ideas seemed to be heading in that direction. It did, however, demonstrate a good grasp on what the game had, and what it needed. Pegasus' included note said much the same, though in far more flowery language. Seto felt even more pleased that Bakura had chosen to apply to Kaiba Corp rather than Industrial Illusions. If Kaiba Corp had run the competition instead, they might well have released this card in place of the one they had put out for the same purpose of Spellcaster support.

Seto heard footsteps on the stairs, then along the corridor. Two sets: Mokuba and Bakura. He checked the clock on his computer monitor, and found that it was already ten o'clock.

Instead of getting some more useful work done, he sat in the darkened room and listened to the sounds of his little brother and their guest getting ready for bed. He recognised Mokuba's footsteps, so the lighter steps must be those of Bakura, who padded almost silently along the wooden corridor. Seto could perfectly envision him brushing his teeth in his pyjamas (in his imagination, Bakura's pyjamas were striped with blue and white, like in old American films). He would probably brush his long hair before bed, too, as Mokuba had done when his was that length. Mokuba had just yanked the brush through the tangles, or demanded that Seto do it for him (because he knew that Seto enjoyed it); but Seto imagined Bakura brushing his white locks carefully, languorously, like a woman.

He snorted at his own flight of fancy. He might as well put his mental image of Bakura in a woman's kimono, slipping enticingly off one shoulder.

It surprised him to feel so intensely about so unlikely a crush-object. Bakura was objectively good-looking, as the many infatuated girls in their class could have attested, but Seto had enough self-awareness to know that his own tastes typically ran more to short-haired, handsome, and more than a little hot-blooded. Bakura's gentle manner and slightly effeminate prettiness were far beyond Seto's usual interests. And yet, they spoke to some part of Seto's personality that had managed not to confuse 'rival' with 'lust object'.

The very idea of what part of his mind Bakura might appeal to (as opposed to what part of his body) so discomfitted Seto that he buried himself in figures and plans for the dramatic revelation of the new Synchro Summoning mechanic, and almost managed to block out the sounds of his unwanted houseguest finishing getting ready for bed and padding down the corridor to his room just as quietly as he had come.

It wasn't unusual for Seto to work late into the night, deeply absorbed in the world of Duel Monsters or the world of business. But never before had the silence of the Kaiba house seemed to him to hold such anticipation.

Would you have felt the same way if the Pharaoh was staying in that room? he asked himself at nearly midnight, irritated with his own hyperawareness. Yes, was the answer: in fact, had the Pharoah somehow come to be sleeping in that room due to some convoluted and improbable sequence of events during Seto's teenaged years, Seto probably would have already opened the door and made some kind of advance that he only half-understood himself. And the Pharaoh...well, who knew what the Pharaoh would have done. Seto could only speculate (and imagine, at length and in detail).

Fed up with himself and how the world and his thoughts all seemed to keep leading back to Bakura Ryou, sex, or both, Seto went to bed. He would need sleep to be prepared to face their houseguest over the breakfast table tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

For once, Seto got what his doctor would have described as a 'healthy amount of sleep'; but nothing could have prepared him for seeing Bakura at the breakfast table.

"Good morning, company head," Bakura greeted him drowsily. Seto had, as usual on weekday mornings, come down to breakfast already washed and dressed. Bakura was evidently a later riser than Seto, as his hair was still damp and no doubt transferring water to his pyjama shirt. Seto had the absurd impulse to remind him that that was supposedly how people caught colds and worse.

The pyjama shirt itself was just beginning to slip off Bakura's narrow shoulder, rather like the woman's kimono in which Seto had briefly imagined him last night, exposing smooth pale skin. The warm autumn sunlight that crept in through the blinds gave him a slight glow.

"Morning," Seto grunted, and averted his eyes. It had taken him years to acquire a taste for coffee, but once he had, he had indulged in a Western-style coffee machine, an Italian brand, to make it properly. Mokuba always said, dubiously, that it looked like a spaceship; but Seto liked its mechanical, slightly alien appearance as it squatted on the counter next to the rice cooker. He now busied himself with it so that he would have no excuse to look at Bakura, who was still warm and rumpled from sleep, and deliciously appealing in those thin pyjamas. He did notice, however, that Bakura was drinking tea.

"Morning!" Mokuba announced, far more chirpily than he usually did as he sprang rather than shuffled downstairs. Either he was finally losing his adolescent hatred of mornings, or Bakura's presence had really delighted him.

"Good morning, vice president," replied Bakura. Mokuba made a face: he must had told Bakura not to call him by his title in private. Seto privately wished him luck in breaking Bakura of the habit. Bakura was in many ways objectively strange, though undoubtedly the most 'normal' game designer Kaiba Corp had (teenaged possession by an evil Ancient Egyptian spirit notwithstanding); but he was punctiliously polite. Seto, who had no manners because he had no patience for them, was grudgingly impressed. There weren't many people who could stand up to Mokuba's wheedling and charm. Seto wasn't that good at it himself, and he'd had a lifetime of practice.

"Seto, can I-?" Seto handed him the already-prepared cup of coffee, sweetened as he knew Mokuba preferred it. He critically inspected Mokuba's appearance, and found that, as usual, he had taken a perfectly respectable school uniform and managed to make himself look like a delinquent in it. It was a skill, he supposed.

"Thanks!" Mokuba took the cup from him with a smile - the smile he only ever gave to Seto - and went to sit with their guest, who was steadily making his way through a small mountain of toast. It looked like the kind of thing Tsuchiyo-san would prepare, were she contracted to make breakfast. But she had only done that in the early days, when Mokuba was still in elementary school: these days she came a few hours before dinner to clean and cook. The variety of different spreads on neatly-cut triangles of toast must therefore be the work of Bakura himself.

Seto vaguely imagined Bakura in place of Tsuchiyo-san, serving breakfast with a housewife's kerchief neatly tied around his hair.

"Mokuba," he said, unnecessarily, "you have fifteen minutes."

Mokuba made an affirmative noise around a mouthful of toast and gave Seto a thumbs up. Seto took his coffee upstairs with him and resumed work in his study, away from unwanted houseguests and meddling brothers.

Quarter of an hour later, the car arrived to take Mokuba to school and Seto to work. Mokuba was ready by the door, enabling Seto to straighten his jacket in a vain attempt to make him look neat. He was tall enough now that the uniform hung elegantly on him, even rumpled, but still something of the _yankee_ hung about him, no matter how shiny his shoes or how neat his hair. Seto looked forward to when Mokuba, in a few months time, would ditch the uniform permanently for the sharp suits he preferred in imitation of his brother. Mysteriously, they never ended up crumpled.

Bakura was not there. Seto didn't ask, since Bakura was still supposed to be beneath his notice; but Mokuba told him anyway.

"Bakura's already gone," he said helpfully. "He said something about the train."

That was a blessing: if he hadn't, Mokuba would surely have insisted that he ride with them, and Seto would have had to put his foot down. Bakura staying in their house overnight was not to become common knowledge. It was only a matter of expedient human resources management, as Seto had rationalised to himself - but still, the less anybody knew about what the Kaiba brothers had of a private life, the better.

"Then I guess we'll see who makes it into the office first," he said instead. "Mokuba, put your shoes in for polishing tonight, they're filthy." He didn't say _What have you been doing with them?_ \- he already knew that Mokuba didn't do anything in particular to make his shoes dirty. It just happened.

So they got in the car to be taken to their respective destinations. Was it Seto's imagination, or did Mokuba still look pleased with himself?

At work, at least, Seto could comfortably put Bakura from his mind. He had an e-mail from Pegasus, including the usual flowery language and entirely gratuitous English, bearing delicately-phrased suggestions about the upcoming launch of the Synchro Summoning mechanic. As most of them looked to be marketing rather than game design, Seto forwarded the message to Takanoya. After a moment's deliberation, he decided not to mark it 'urgent'.

Satisfied with this act of petty derision, he pressed 'send', then swiveled to consider the city of Domino through his office's floor-to-ceiling windows. Tokyo was bigger, wealthier, better connected for international business; but Domino was _his_. Gozaburo had made it a by-word for arms dealing and weapon manufacturing: now Seto had made it synonymous with gaming. Seto's satisfaction in making things to develop the game of Duel Monsters and bring enjoyment to the young was spiced by his pleasure in so comprehensively defacing the old man's legacy.

The launch of Synchro Summoning would require some extensive demonstration duels. Seto would take part, of course. Whenever he won a public duel, Kaiba Corp's stock shot up at least ten points. Shareholders liked to see him putting his money where his mouth was, so to speak.

He drafted a brief e-mail to all the sufficiently advanced duelists whom he thought could keep their mouths shut for a week. It was a short list. Dinosaur Ryuuzaki and Inspector Haga, despite their dueling credentials, weren't on it. Seto wouldn't trust either of them to keep a child's birthday present a secret. But Yugi could, and if pressed Jounouchi probably could too - and he was always a favourite whenever he appeared at a tournament. He was probably driven by the knowledge that the prize money was paying his way through technical college. Mai Kujaku, too...Seto reviewed a mental list of Battle City participants. Anzu Mazaki was no longer duelling and was in New York besides; none of the Ishtars had been seen at duelling tournaments for years, for which Seto was profoundly grateful; and then there was Bakura...well, he _could_ ask Bakura, he supposed. But he had had no indication that Bakura had so much as touched a deck since the Spirit of the Ring had been defeated once and for all. Bakura had always claimed to be more into tabletop RPGs, anyway.

It was a shame, though. The Spirit had played an Occult deck, which suited his ghoulish attitudes perfectly; but Seto had now come to suspect that it was the real Bakura who had put that deck together in the first place. It had shown the same aesthetic interests and grasp of strategy that Bakura now brought to his design work for Kaiba Corp. On the surface, Bakura seemed an unlikely candidate to enjoy zombies and ghouls and spirits; but obviously his interests ran in a distinctly occult direction.

But this was all immaterial. Bakura had stayed for one night in his house, at Mokuba's behest. This morning, Seto had seen Bakura in his pyjamas; he would never be exposed to the sight (or the temptation) again. Seto could safely continue to have no personal interest in Bakura at all.

He didn't cotton on to this not being the case until he arrived home late and, just as he had the previous night, was welcomed by voices.

In the living room, Mokuba had a Capsule Monsters set open and was showing Bakura how to set up the board. They both looked up at the sound of Seto's socked footsteps.

"Welcome home, big brother!" Mokuba was smiling the smile of the younger sibling who knew he was in trouble.

"Welcome home, company head." Bakura blushed prettily under Seto's unrelenting stare.

"I'm back," he ground out. Bakura shrank in on himself. Mokuba kept smiling.

"Have you eaten? Tsuchiyo-san left something in the fridge..."

"I have." Seto couldn't actually be angry with Mokuba, and Mokuba knew it. He settled for looking at them both disapprovingly. "I'll work upstairs." He put down his briefcase and went to fetch himself some coffee; then, on second thoughts, chose tea instead. He meant to work, but also to sleep.

When he returned down the corridor with his tea and found that Bakura had excused himself to the bathroom, Seto took the opportunity.

"Mokuba," said Seto, "I was under the impression that Bakura was staying only for one night."

"No, no," Mokuba assured him breezily. "No, he's staying for a week, didn't I tell you? Just while the fire department finish cleaning up his apartment building and making sure nothing else has been damaged by the fire."

"No, I don't think you _did_ tell me that." But the damage was already done, and Seto knew it and Mokuba knew that Seto knew it. Bakura was staying with them for a week.

Seto was not ashamed to do things that other people would regard as unkind, cruel, or downright sociopathic. He was capable of being, as Jounouchi had once put it, an utter bastard. But still, he knew that he wasn't going to throw money at Bakura and tell him to get a hotel room, despite the plethora of cheap and comfortable business hotels around Kaiba Corp. There was no good reason for this. It was what he would have done for any other employee - hell, he would have done that on the first evening. But one of the joys of being the head of one of the largest gaming companies in the world, never mind the country, was rarely having to justify himself. So he simply said,

"He's _your_ houseguest, Mokuba."

Mokuba smirked openly. He was justified: he had won a decisive victory. Seto withdrew from the field with as much dignity as remained to him.


	6. Chapter 6

Breakfast the next morning proceeded in much the same vein as the first. Seto rose first, and answered his e-mails before coming down to breakfast. He liked to answer them before the workday started: it gave his underlings the impression that he didn't sleep.

Mokuba shuffled down in his school uniform ten minutes later. It looked neater this morning, though Seto doubted how long that would last.

"Morning," he mumbled. Seto grunted in return and passed him the jam.

His reverie over coffee and toast was interrupted by the house phone ringing. This was a rare occurrence: usually people rang Seto's phone directly. Mokuba picked up the receiver.

"Hello? Oh, hi, Tsuchiyo-san...Oh no, that's terrible! Yes, yes...no, of course...yes...OK, bye, Tsuchiyo-san." He replaced the receiver and turned to Seto. "It's Tsuchiyo-san. She says her husband isn't well and she needs to take tonight off." Mokuba looked troubled. "The cleaning will keep, and I guess we could have takeaway or go out for dinner..."

Seto, who had grown used to the pleasure of home-cooked meals, shrugged. "Whichever."

Bakura traipsed down the stairs a minute later, hair still wet but already dressed, and murmured his thanks as Mokuba poured him tea. Mokuba, Seto had noticed, was enjoying playing the good host.

"...so we're either sending the car for takeaway or going out to eat," Mokuba explained. Seto was leaning towards the second option: it would do him good to get out of the house and away from its extra occupant.

"Poor Tsuchiyo-san and her husband! That's really too bad." Bakura sounded genuinely sorry for the housekeeper. For her part, Tsuchiyo-san had taken a liking to Bakura, who was 'so polite and so helpful'. "If it's not too much trouble... _I_ could cook? The company head and vice president have been so kind in letting me stay here, and I would like to repay you in some way."

"You don't have to repay us! But...those guys did say you were a really good cook." Mokuba, who was often ruled by his stomach, looked as if he were seriously considering it. "Seto? What do you think?"

"Do what you want." Seto busied himself with the paper again.

"That means 'yes'," Mokuba confided in a stage whisper. Seto didn't need to look to know that Bakura was hiding a smile. Mokuba could think what he liked about him and Bakura becoming friends: in fact, Seto could see perfectly well that Bakura was becoming closer to _Mokuba_. Well, out of all of Yugi's little group, he was probably the least bad influence.

"Then it's decided. What do you want to eat? Oh, I should check what you have in first..."

"I want hotpot!" Mokuba _always_ wanted hotpot. Seto forbore to point out that it was still quite warm outside, and not really hotpot weather. Two sets of footsteps headed in the direction of the kitchen. Seto wished them luck in finding the ingredients for hotpot: he had only the barest essentials of cooking himself, and he had no idea what Tsuchiyo-san kept in the cupboards. So long as Bakura put some kind of meat in it, he would be satisfied.

Again, Bakura had vanished by the time Seto and Mokuba left, presumably to catch the train. Seto approved.

As the car swung out into the morning Domino traffic, Mokuba cleared his throat, looked sideways at Seto, and said,

"I really like having Bakura stay with us."

"Especially now that he's offered to cook for you." Seto wasn't sure where this was going, but Mokuba's serious face boded ill.

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to hotpot! But...Bakura's really nice, don't you think?"

Bakura was, indeed, very nice and polite. Seto might even go so far as to say that he almost _liked_ Bakura's company. But Seto wasn't going to admit that he thought that of Bakura or anybody else, so he just said,

"Like I said, he's the least bad influence you could have picked. Where are you going with this, exactly?"

"Well, I know you don't like people intruding," (this was a mild way to put it), "and you keep saying you're not interested in having friends, but I did bring Bakura to stay with us _technically_ without ever actually asking you if it was OK, so I just wanted to be sure."

"I'm not going to throw him out on the street," Seto assured his brother as the Kaiba Corp skyscraper came into view. Annoyingly, the view of it as one approached from the west was blocked by a Mitsubishi tower; Seto already had plans in motion to demolish it. "I find him very tolerable." After a moment, he added, "I'm glad you enjoy his company." Seto himself might not need friends, but he knew Mokuba did. And he could hardly have picked a better one than Bakura himself.

"That's good," said Mokuba, who now looked much more cheerful. "From _you_ , that's practically giving your blessing for me to marry him." He caught Seto's look. "It's legal in Canada now, you know!"

Seto did, indeed, know this fact. What he _didn't_ know was whether he was imagining a certain nervousness in Mokuba's manner, as if he were trying to tell Seto that he knew something, without outright telling him what he knew.

The car came to a halt. Seto's door opened.

"See you tonight!" Mokuba chirped, still bright and cheerful. "The hotpot's gonna be great!"

Seto made a noncommittal noise, closed the door, and watched as the car wove through the Domino traffic towards the high school. Mokuba hadn't, he thought, been trying to make a confession about his own sexual preferences: certainly Seto had never observed anything unorthodox about Mokuba's tastes, which were quite evident. Though it would be the finishing touch of perfect, awful irony if Mokuba _were_ trying to confess to a crush on Bakura himself. Seto spent a moment in morbid contemplation of this thankfully unlikely scenario. He would have to cede the field, of course.

But there was nothing to suggest that that was the case. Seto looked up at Kaiba Corp, at the great glass-paned building that housed all his ambitions and power. If he turned a little to the right, he could see - yes, that was it, the window from which Gozaburo had fallen to his death. Jumped, in fact. There had been plenty of speculation over why Gozaburo Kaiba would have wanted to kill himself when his company was doing so well and his personal life had all been in order, hadn't it? One of Seto's first acts as company head had been to arrange for rumours to be spread about a drinking problem and a man haunted by his failed first marriage. Since Seto then himself appeared on television to deny these rumours, they became popularly accepted truth within the week.

Reminiscing about his comprehensive defeat of his adoptive father always put Seto in a good mood. He pushed open the door and took the lift up to his office - the only lift that allowed access to it, reserved for his use - and spent the day in industrious contemplation of Kaiba Corp's next big release. Even a silky, insinuating e-mail from Pegasus was banished to Game Design with a satisfied click - again, not marked 'important'.

By the time evening rolled around and the sky began to darken to royal blue, Seto was quite looking forward to hotpot.

Seto opened the front door to the smell of dashi stock simmering on the stove and the sound of light, tuneless humming. Tsuchiyo-san must be - no, Tsuchiyo-san was caring for her husband. Overcome by curiosity, Seto slipped off his shoes and padded down the corridor to the kitchen. He wasn't _trying_ to sneak up on Bakura, but something about the moment felt fragile and he acted instinctively. He slid open the door with care, and found Bakura at the stove, replacing the lid on a pot of what must be the stock.

Bakura had even found Tsuchiyo-san's apron and put it on. He just needed the white kerchief, and he'd be the perfect image of a housewife.

"Company head," he greeted Seto warmly, "welcome home." The broth must be nearly done, because he was starting to chop up the burdock root.

"I'm home," Seto mumbled, suddenly discomfited. Bakura appeared quite serene and competent in the kitchen, in _his_ kitchen. "You like cooking, huh?" he asked; then wondered what had provoked him to ask such a stupid question.

But Bakura was nodding.

"Yes, I do. My mother taught me, and now with Dad away so often I normally cook for myself at home." This was said, Seto noted approvingly, without an ounce of self-pity. He had already guessed from Bakura's response to Mokuba's earlier questions that his father was rarely in Domino, despite his tenure as professor of archaeology. "Though I must admit, having Tsuchiyo-san cook for me is a nice change."

"Tsuchiyo-san is an excellent cook," Seto agreed. "She's cooked for both of us for many years. Mokuba would give up junk food forever if he could just live off Tsuchiyo-san's cooking." Seto neglected to add that while he didn't do junk food in the first place, he might well give up eating out altogether for the same reason. It was almost a shame that he didn't entertain clients at home: Tsuchiyo-san's efforts would surely make them much more agreeable.

If Bakura was suspicious of Seto's sudden uncharacteristic willingness to engage in idle chat, he didn't show it. He just fished out the sheet of kombu and cut slits in it before returning it to the pot and setting it to boil.

"You and the vice president are so close," he said, still punctiliously using Mokuba's title. "It's such a cheerful thing, so see brothers who care for each other so much." He turned to chop the mushrooms in half. It was the perfect lead in: Seto couldn't have planned it better himself.

"And what about you?" Seto asked, as casually as he could drop it into the conversation. "You have a younger sister, don't you?" It was a gamble: Seto had neglected to hack into hospital birth records or the family register, so he didn't know the birth order.

Bakura didn't quite fumble the knife: he just clenched it tightly, just for a moment. Then he smiled, fondly.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "Amane. Though I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to speak with her."

He could have meant that she was in a foreign country - Borneo, maybe, or even just America. But Seto knew.

"When did she die?" he asked.

"When I was fourteen, so nearly ten years ago now. She was in a car crash. My mother was driving. Neither of them survived." Bakura didn't act like he expected or wanted sympathy. _When I was fourteen..._ That couldn't have been long before he transferred to their school. "I still write to her, sometimes," Bakura added unexpectedly. "Don't worry," he said when he caught Seto's look, "I don't expect her to write back."

For a long minute, Seto said nothing. He had too many questions he wanted to ask, and the knowledge that none of them were appropriate. He didn't care about being rude, but he didn't want to seem ghoulish. Once, several years ago now, a reporter had picked up on the fact that he and his brother were adopted, and asked a question about their biological parents - Seto no longer even remembered the details. He no longer had a career as a reporter. Seto had made sure of it.

"Amane was two years younger than me," Bakura offered into the silence. He had started chopping daikon again. "We look really alike - I've got pictures of her. Here, I put one on my phone..." He put down the knife, dug his phone out of his pocket and pressed a few keys. The design was a couple of years old, and looked primitive to Seto's jaded eyes. He could predict that within a few years, all his employees would have touchscreen phones much like the one he himself had. "Here." Bakura held out the phone for Seto to take.

Bakura was right: his sister had been a female version of him. It was an old photograph, perhaps scanned into a computer and uploaded to the phone, so he could carry Amane with him everywhere. Seto would estimate the girl in the photograph as eleven or twelve, which wouldn't have been long before her death. Her fair hair curled around her delicate face, and her smile stretched to her dark eyes - which, when Seto looked closely, looked to be dark blue rather than her brother's brown. Seto was no great judge of female attractiveness, but he could guess that she would have grown up into a very pretty young woman.

"She does look like you." Seto passed the phone back. Bakura glanced at the picture briefly before shutting his phone and slipping it back into his pocket. He was smiling a little as he picked up the knife again.

Many times, Seto had faced the frightening reality that he might not see Mokuba alive again. He had always pushed past it: he _would_ get Mokuba back. He didn't allow himself to believe otherwise. And when he'd succeeded, he refused to dwell on what might have happened if the worst came to pass. It wouldn't help him or Mokuba.

But hearing Bakura so plainly state what had happened to his younger sister, and seeing him so obviously still grieving for her, brought to Seto's mind memories of the most dangerous kidnapping Mokuba had been subject to: that designed by Noa. Pegasus had simply used him as bait, but Noa had preyed on his mind.

Mokuba had forgiven him for it; Seto hadn't. They didn't talk about it.

What would it be like, Seto wondered, if he received a phone call one day, telling him that Mokuba...

No, that was nonsense. It was stupid to think of things like that. Mokuba wasn't in danger, and it did neither of them any good for Seto to think up scenarios in which he was.

Bakura had moved onto the other vegetables, and the soft look in his eyes suggested that he was lost in his own thoughts. For once in his life, Seto kept respectfully quiet. He left while Bakura was dropping in the bonito flakes.

E-mails were awaiting his attention, as always - at least they'd mostly replaced answerphone messages, which he despised so much he'd disabled his answering machine - but Seto sat in his desk chair and stared out of the window at the impeccably manicured lawns and shrubs.

There was no point in feeling anything as pedestrian as sympathy for Bakura: so his mother and sister were dead, so what? As Seto had told himself ever since he was a child, his parents were dead, so what? Seto barely even remembered them. He and Mokuba were alive. Many people lost parents, brothers and sisters to the implacable embrace of death. Even people their age. It was unusual, but it didn't make them _special_.

But he did feel an affinity with Bakura. He and Amane had obviously been close, and as for his mother...Seto knew there was a different between losing a parent when you were barely old enough to understand and losing them in your teens, but he'd never had reason to think about it before. The absent father too, no doubt himself too wrapped up in grief...

Seto wasn't much given to sympathy or even empathy with anybody who wasn't Mokuba, but his newfound knowledge of Bakura's history touched the same nerve in him that learning of Jounouchi's had: the broken marriage, the alcoholic father with gambling debts that Jounouchi had worked part-time in middle school to repay. The same feeling that had urged the enterprise of Kaiba Land and turning his stepfather's company to gaming instead of arms development: the conviction that children should not be subject to the injustice and vissicitudes of the universe, and especially not at the hands of those who ought to take care of them.

There was nothing to be done about it in Bakura's case, which irritated him: both that there was nothing to be done, and that he still felt the desire. It was becoming harder to deny that Seto's interest had developed into a full-blown crush. The shared experience of filial grief was hardly a basis on which to begin a relationship - which Seto didn't even want in the first place - but Seto couldn't shake the feeling of emotional connection he had with Bakura. Sexual interest, in his limited experience, had always come attached to rivalry: now that it came attached to quite different emotions, he was all at sea.

This nonsense was what came of sympathising with people, Seto told himself. It had started with purely physical attraction, and now Bakura's forced proximity was deceiving his mind into mistaking base urges for higher ones. Seto made a mental note that he should masturbate more often, and turned his attention at last to his inbox until Mokuba's footsteps bounded up the stairs and he was subject to the loud cry of 'BAKURA MADE HOTPOT'.

Bakura had, indeed, made hotpot. And it was dangerously close to being as good as Tsuchiyo-san's. Not that Seto praised it in such effusive terms: those were Mokuba's words. But he agreed with them. The three of them took their time over the meal, fishing out every scrap of vegetable and seafood, and adding all that was on the table. Seto thought he might have eaten almost as much as Bakura by the end. They all arrayed themselves on couches in the living room, too full to make conversation.

The English saying _The way to a man's heart is through his stomach_ floated through his mind, and he pushed it away. The way to _his_ heart was being Mokuba; or, failing that, a worthy rival. For everybody else, as far as Seto was concerned, it was between the third and fourth ribs.

It was very pleasant, though, to have somebody else in the house (and Seto knew that had to be the excellent dinner talking, because he would never ordinarily think such a thing). Somebody who was quiet, polite, and a good cook, who understood and enjoyed gaming and the process of making games...somebody who was, moreover, of decorative aspect and pleasing to look at...who would no doubt blush attractively if kissed and respond shyly but ardently to his advances...

"Seto, I'm going to bed," Mokuba announced.

"Yes," said Seto. "So will I. In a minute. Good night, Mokuba."

"Good night, big brother," said Mokuba obediently and affectionately as he began to climb the stairs. After a moment, Bakura got up to follow him.

"Good night, Kaiba-san," he murmured as he passed. Seto blinked: Bakura hadn't addressed him like that since their first meeting in his office, weeks ago.

"Good night," he said, after a hesitation, and watched Bakura climb the stairs, admiring the delicacy of his profile. Then he sighed, and resigned himself to another three days of this hormonal nonsense. It was like being a teenager again. Ridiculous.


	7. Chapter 7

Seto continued to see far too much of Bakura Ryou.

It was beyond the bounds of normal probability that he would catch sight of Bakura so often in the corridors at Kaiba Corp when he barely stepped out of his office, or that his name would turn up so much in documentation from the design department, or that so many of Mokuba's texts would suddenly be about their unexpected houseguest.

_Bakura says his apartment will be habitable by the end of the week!_ read the latest. Seto had several conflicting emotions about Bakura's iminent departure from their house, and in accordance with his usual practice he ignored them until they went away. He understood love for Mokuba, pride in success, and anger at anything that threatened the above. Anything else was beyond his emotional remit, and he was not interested in expanding it. He saw the trouble it caused other people.

The R&D department demanded his attention. The newest Duel Disks were about to go live, and he intended to test them to destruction before they were finally released to the public. Well, the top duelists, at least - they would be using Kaiba Corp's latest designs for the current Grand Prix tournament before they were given a general release a few weeks later. It would drum up further interest and make them seem more exclusive; Seto had approved the same trick with previous iterations to great success.

Naturally, the first thing he saw when he stepped into the duelling arena was a mane of white hair. He could have cursed aloud.

"What is Bakura doing here?" he demanded of a technician standing by - Inaki, or somebody.

"W-we needed duelists to test it, and because it became known that Bakura-san was a finalist in the Battle City tournament..."

It was, Seto had to admit grudgingly, a good explanation. Never mind that _this_ Bakura hadn't actually been the one duelling - as far as anybody beyond Yugi's little group was concerned, vengeful Ancient Egyptian spirits possessing magical gold items was something they might read in a cheap novel.

Still, despite Bakura professing to prefer RPGs to Duel Monsters, Seto saw at a glance that he was winning comprehensively against Lindgren. He'd just sent another of his Fiends to the Graveyard and then used a card effect to banish it, so he was presumably about to summon...

"I summon _Dark Necrofear!_ "

The new holographic technology really _was_ sharper: Dark Necrofear's eyes seemed to glow with unearthly light, and as for her broken doll...Yes, everybody in the room was able to appreciate the true grotesquery of the card's design.

The duel was over very quickly after that. Lindgren made a valiant attempt at summoning Swift Gaia the Fierce Knight, but was foiled by Bakura's Dark Spirit of the Silent. Lindgren shuddered as Dark Necrofear attacked and drained the last of her life points.

"Thank you for the duel," said Bakura, polite as ever.

"Thank _you_ \- that was some duel! Now I see how you got to the Battle City finals." Lindgren's American enthusiasm couldn't be dimmed by defeat in a test duel. Seto understood that the other engineers found her culturally baffling, but good company all the same. As far as he was concerned, her most important attribute was that she was a first-rate engineer with genuinely innovative ideas.

She and Bakura noticed their new audience at the same time.

"Company head!" they chorused. Both looked genuinely pleased to see him, which was more than Seto could say about many of his employees. He wouldn't say that they lived in fear of their boss, precisely, but he did enjoy a healthy level of awe in their respect for him. Lindgren, being American, was impervious to such subtlety; and Bakura, he remembered, hadn't been intimidated even in their first interview. He might be shy, but he wasn't timid.

"The new technology is a clear improvement on the old," Seto announced. The assembled company, accustomed to their boss' oracular pronouncements in place of social niceties, all nodded and murmured agreement. Seto considered them all, seeking a suitable opponent.

Bakura was the only possibility: as Lindgren had pointed out, he had reached the Battle City finals. It hadn't, of course, been _him_ \- but his duel with Lindgren had just proved that he was competent in Duel Monsters. His strategy that Seto had been exposed to in tournaments and then, later, very personally, might well be Bakura's, not the Spirit's.

But he was trying _not_ to spend time focussing on Bakura, Seto reminded himself. He ought to pick somebody else, maybe even Lindgren, who never took loss personally. But Bakura was a more tempting prospect, and it took Seto only a moment to decide.

"Bakura, you're my opponent!"

Bakura looked alarmed at this prospect. Nevertheless, he offered no protest as Seto took Lindgren's place.

Seto had not seriously considered that he might lose. The Spirit of the Ring, who was far more experienced, hadn't defeated him (though of course, a part of Seto's brain thought uneasily, he hadn't been _trying_ ). And, indeed, he remained undefeated. What Seto wanted was to experience dueling Bakura, the real Bakura. Psychologists and astrologers could say what they liked about personality typing through tests or the stars, but Seto knew that you could tell a lot about a person by what games they picked and how they played them.

Seto was right: he didn't lose. But he did get to see Bakura the canny strategist at work. Bakura played what seemed to be a combination of his Fiend deck from Battle City focussing around his trump card of Dark Necrofear, and an Undead Lock deck of the kind the Spirit of the Ring had used against Yugi. Cursed Twin Dolls made an appearance, as did Dark Spirit of the Silent. Seto's Soul Release proved to be the deciding card - once he'd used it to banish the Fiends from Bakura's graveyard before he could summon Dark Necrofear, there were several tense turns as Bakura tried to get more low-level fiends in his graveyard and draw another Necrofear while not taking damage - and then Seto drew Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and within a few turns it was over.

Bakura smiled and thanked him for the duel, of course. Seto looked him up and down. He was an unimposing figure, and without the Spirit of the Ring possessing him, he was a good duelist but nowhere near good enough to be Seto's rival; but the aggressive strategy that Seto had assumed was the Spirit's had turned out to be Bakura's own. As Seto had originally thought: shy, but not timid. Not the kind of person who'd lose to Seto deliberately, either. Seto liked the competitive streak that just showed through his protective colouration of politeness.

"Thank you," he replied in his usual taciturn manner. "I was able to experience the true skills of a Battle City finalist." _And beaten them_ was left unspoken. The Blue-Eyes had looked especially splendid in the new Duel Disk graphics, too. It hadn't been an objectively better duel than his most recent match with Pegasus, and Seto didn't experience the same thrill out of his win; but he still felt satisfied as he descended from the dueling arena.

Winning duels always put Seto in a good mood, so the rest of the day passed quite pleasantly for Seto and, by extension, all of Kaiba Corp. When Mokuba came in from school, he even remarked on it.

"Did you beat Pegasus again?" he asked, semi-seriously. His school uniform was tragically wrinkled _again_. Seto didn't want to know what he did in it to get it that way.

"No," was all he said. If Mokuba was curious enough, he would no doubt check Seto's schedule and speak to the R&D department, who would unwittingly explain all. Seto preferred to let Mokuba go searching for information like that: it encouraged self-reliance and lateral thinking. It was certainly more humane than anything Gozaburo had ever done to encourage those traits in his adopted sons.

"OK, I'll ask around," Mokuba informed him cheerfully. "I've forwarded you all the e-mails Pegasus keeps sending me, by the way. I guess he thinks I'm a softer target than you."

Seto frowned. Pegasus had long considered Mokuba a soft target. They'd been trying to correct that.

"How's judo going?"

"I have my third dan exam next month." Mokuba shrugged. "I did fine against the last two thugs he sent. His kidnapping attempts have really tailed off in the last few years, have you noticed?"

Sensing that this would only lead to Mokuba insinuating things about their so-called 'friendship' again, Seto just made a noncommittal grunt. Mokuba was right, but Seto was still sure that Pegasus had something up his sleeve.

Seto was still ruminating on Pegasus' presumed dastardly plot that evening, reading R&D reports in his shirtsleeves at home. His rivalry with Pegasus did not imply that he actually liked the man or his company, but he had to admit, it was stimulating in other ways.

As usual when he was working, time passed with Seto barely noticing. When he next looked at the time in the corner of his screen, it was nearly midnight, and the house was silent. Somewhere in the grounds, an owl hooted. Everything was still, illuminated only by Seto's desk lamp - and, when he shut that off, the waxing moon through the window.

Seto went downstairs to get a drink before turning in - and was confronted with what he'd been trying not to think about.

Bakura looked like a painting, sitting in Seto's usual chair and evidently deep in thought. His pyjama shirt was slipping carelessly off one shoulder, just as it had at breakfast several days ago; and in the moonlight his unblemished skin looked like marble. It was an exceptionally beautiful scene, and if Seto had been a Heian nobleman he would have had to compose a poem about it. Since he was nothing of the sort, he froze in the doorway, fearful of intruding in his own home.

But he must have moved or cast a shadow, because Bakura looked up and caught him.

"Ah, Kaiba-san." That was the second time he'd addressed Seto in that way while in the house. "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"No, no." Aware that he was not just lingering but looming in a potentially intimidating way, Seto left the doorway and dropped into Mokuba's customary chair. He heard what he suspected to be the rustle of sweet wrappers as he sat down. _This,_ he told an imaginary Mokuba, _is how you get mice._ He would have to remind Tsuchiyo-san to clean the furniture more _thoroughly_ in future.

For a prolonged moment, they sat in a silence that Seto was unwilling to break.

"It was very kind of you to let me stay here," said Bakura at last. He didn't ask Seto why he had let him stay. Days ago, Seto might have put it down to politeness or incuriosity; but he knew that Bakura was intelligent and an older brother himself. He didn't need to ask.

The moonlight made Bakura's pale hair glow. Seto murmured noncommittally. The night was hushed, without even the cry of an owl or nightjar to break the stillness; only the soft _shush-shush_ of leaves on leaves, a comforting kind of white noise. There was a confidential, vulnerable air about. It was the kind of night for sharing secrets.

Irritated by his own fancy, Seto asked in a low voice,

"I hope your father hasn't been troubled by the fire?"

He knew quite well that he hadn't; but he had noticed that Bakura hadn't mentioned his father once during his extended stay, even in passing.

"No, I don't expect him back for at least another month. He's on a dig which might have uncovered the tomb of Arsinoe, and then he'll stay for another week to supervise the storage and exhibition of the artefacts..." Bakura trailed off with a slight shrug that conveyed the vagueness of his absent father's travel plans. As when he had spoken of his mother and sister, he betrayed no sentiment of resentment. Evidently, this was simply the way things were in the Bakura household - a household that was barely worth the term, given the father's extended absence.

Seto had simply assumed that for Bakura also this unexpected cohabitation was an imposition, an interesting but unwelcome intrusion into his private life. He now suspected, having rapidly reviewed Bakura's behaviour over the past few days, that this was not true, and that in fact Bakura was enjoying the company as much as Mokuba was.

"He gave me the Ring, you know." He spoke without looking at Seto. "He found it on a dig, I'm not sure where in Egypt exactly. Some royal site." He seemed to curl up further in his chair. "We all should have known that there was something strange about it then: that kind of bizarre gold jewellery ought to have been kept in a museum's collection for study, Dad would never have given me anything historically important. But the Ring had a purpose in mind..." He trailed off for a long minute. Seto's mind raced. He longed to ask how old Bakura had been when his father had given him the Ring, but hardly dared interrupt.

He wasn't prone to fear of any kind - indeed, he might have described himself as fearless - but he had found it unnerving how the Spirit of the Ring had worn Bakura's body like a flesh suit, and spoken so crudely in his host's mild voice. It was as if Bakura were an actor totally inhabiting his part, from the voice to the slouch to the permanent smirk of contempt; but in fact it hadn't been Bakura at all, just an ancient malevolence wearing his face. How much had the real Bakura known at the time? Had he known what the Spirit was doing and been forced to watch, powerless to stop it? Or been locked away in a kind of slumber until the Spirit released him with no memory of what it had been doing with his body?

"I don't remember very much of that year," Bakura said, as if he'd heard Seto's thoughts - or just guessed where they must be heading. "The year I transferred to our school, I mean. The Spirit had taken over before, of course, but rarely...but after Duelist Kingdom, my memory is just..." He made a hand gesture that Seto assumed was meant to convey _like a block of Swiss cheese_. "There's video, you know," he added after a moment. "Not much, but somebody recorded a few seconds of a Battle City duel on their phone. I only watched it once. I couldn't bear to watch him acting like himself, in my body."

Though not of notedly empathetic nature, Seto could well imagine how disturbing that would be. Reportedly, somebody had once worn a disguise of himself for a duel in the same tournament, and Seto was almost glad that there was no video evidence. And, despite Seto's firm conviction that his problems were more important than other people's as a matter of course, he recognised that what the Spirit had done to Bakura was worse.

"He was a complete bastard," he said instead. Everything else he might say sounded too much like sentimentality.

"He was," Bakura agreed. "He used to talk to me, sometimes. Or just laugh. It's such a relief to be alone in my own head these days." His gaze was distant. "I was worried I might miss him, at first. When he was pretending to be on our side he was so - friendly. Still horrid, but friendly too. But in the end, I couldn't feel bad about it at all."

As far as Seto was concerned, that was entirely proper. He could never bring himself to feel bad about Gozaburo, the architect of his childhood horrors. Of course, he hadn't tried that hard.

"You have nothing to feel bad about," he said. It wasn't consolation: it was a statement of fact. Bakura smiled anyway.

"You're so confident in saying that, Kaiba-san. I appreciate your honesty." His dark gaze flickered to Seto, and they locked eyes.

Seto looked away to stare out the window again, as quick as if he'd seen something he shouldn't, as if he'd been burnt. His skin prickled. Not with fear. He'd never had trouble meeting anyone's gaze before.

"Kaiba-san...thank you for taking me on." Seto focussed on Bakura's delicate pale foot. It was safer than his shoulder. "You faced the Spirit of the Ring, and afer what he did to Mokuba...I don't remember any of it, but you must. I was so glad to find that Mokuba didn't hold a grudge, but I thought that you might still..." He let the sentence trail off without a verb, but Seto could make an educated guess to fill in the blank.

"The grudge I hold is against the Spirit of the Ring, not you." This was in the much the same way as he held a grudge against Pegasus for trying the same thing, but not his hired goons; and Bakura had had far less control over the situation than Pegasus' men who were, to Seto's knowledge, not subject to mental alteration. "You're a valued employee."

Seto still couldn't quite look Bakura in the face, but he knew he was smiling. It wasn't sentimental, but they both knew that Seto didn't hand out that kind of praise often.

"I've enjoyed your company, Kaiba-san," Bakura murmured. This was not the sort of thing that people usually said to Seto, unless they were being sarcastic. Surprised, Seto could only reply with the truth.

"I've also enjoyed yours." He didn't quite stutter. Seto Kaiba did not _stutter_. Yet he was still deeply aware that he had revealed something of himself to Bakura, something that Gozaburo had always known for weakness and beat out of him.

What alarmed him was that he _wanted_ to reveal it to Bakura, as if they were friends, or anything more to each other than employer and employee. Seto didn't have _friends_ : he didn't enjoy the company of those less intelligent than himself, and equals were always rivals.

Bakura's long-lashed brown eyes were liquid in the moonlight. They were sitting so close together, much closer than they ever sat normally, and Seto could truly appreciate the way Bakura's long hair brushed over his bare shoulder whenever he turned his head. Up close, the fine strands were slightly wavy and made a mass that Seto would be glad to push away from the curve of Bakura's neck with his hand. It looked soft - both the hair and the neck.

As if in a dream, Seto leant forward and did just that. Bakura's throat was warm against his fingers, and his pulse beat strongly. Bakura stayed very still as Seto's hand came to cup the curve of his neck, just under his jaw, lifting away his hair - so soft against the back of his hand - and holding him in place for-

Seto came back to himself and jerked away. It had felt _natural_ , perfectly natural, to take hold of Bakura and lean in for a kiss. He had acted completely without any rational input from his brain: his body knew things his mind didn't.

Bakura was still staring at him, lips parted as if in invitation.

Seto strode out of the room blindly.

He didn't stop until he was already up the stairs and standing in the corridor. His heart was pounding. It was nothing, nothing. He shouldn't have done that. Why had he done that? The false intimacy of a dark room and secrets shared. He was already attracted to Bakura, he'd known that, and now he'd stupidly put himself in a position where he would be tempted.

It was just a stupid loss of control. Seto knew he was blushing, and hated it.

It would be different if it had been part of some plan to seduce Bakura, who was pretty and maybe even willing, judging by his reaction. But Seto _hadn't_ planned to sleep with Bakura: in fact, he had decided the exact opposite. Sex was one thing; but his own tender feelings edged dangerously close to emotional entanglement, and he was completely unwilling to examine them or act on them.

Bakura would be gone from the house in the next few days. After that, they would only see each other at work, and eventually Seto's inappropriate reactions to his presence would stop. He just had to avoid being alone with Bakura until then - not that hard, surely.

He carefully didn't think of anything as he was pulling on his pyjamas and getting into bed. He preferred to clear his mind in preparation for sleep. But his own thoughts rang hollow in his head, and all night long he tossed and turned in the grip of strange dreams, all involving Bakura.


	8. Chapter 8

Seto didn't avoid Bakura from then on. He nodded briskly to him at breakfast, steadfastly ignoring the way his pale shoulder was again bared by his slipping pyjama top. Was he doing that on purpose? Seto took refuge in the newspaper, but had the uncomfortable feeling that Bakura's eyes were on him more often than usual.

At lunchtime - a lunch spent at his desk - he received a text from Mokuba.

_Bakura apartment ready,_ it said. This was quickly followed by, _Sorry hes going, we had loads of fun!_

Seto's fingers hovered indecisively over the floating keyboard for a long moment. He settled for the reply:

_He's a very good cook._

The taste of Bakura's hotpot filled his mouth, like a hallucination. He pressed the intercom and told his secretary to get him another cup of coffee.

There was, of course, the possibility that the sudden, convenient recovery of Bakura's apartment was nothing of the sort. Bakura might simply have taken the swiftest opportunity to flee the Kaiba abode now that Seto had so stupidly given himself away. He hadn't seemed disgusted last night, only surprised; but it would be a logical step to take if he wished to avoid further unwanted advances.

Seto could find out: he would simply ring the Domino fire department and ask. No doubt it wasn't the kind of information they were supposed to give out to civillians, but in Seto's experience that sort of rule was remarkably flexible if the asker had enough determination and what Pegasus liked to call 'influence' and Seto liked to call 'money'.

He didn't. Bakura claimed that his apartment was habitable again, and Seto was no longer required at Mokuba's behest to give him house room. They could be employer and employee once more, unhampered by any personal relationship or Seto's useless sexual interest. Eventually, he would stop noticing Bakura in the corridors and thinking about him quite so much.

He sent another short-tempered e-mail to Accounting to demand a more efficient profit-estimation algorithm, and had another cup of coffee as he considered how to approach a US distributor. He sent another e-mail, in rather more moderate tone, to Marketing to inquire of their expertise in international relations. He couldn't just treat every American like he did Pegasus, though challenging them to a duel to determine business terms _would_ be a great deal more efficient.

In this way, he managed to pass the day without thinking of things that he had decided he shouldn't think about. Or, at least, not too often. He paid another visit to the R&D labs to observe the new Duel Disks in practice and also to introduce the new Synchro Summon mechanic to the techs. He timed how long it took them to pick up the principles and start devising strategies. Not long, unsurprisingly: these were world-class engineering minds he'd hired. Some of the engineers kept looking at him nervously, as if watching a piece of lithium about to be dropped into a bowl of water; but soon they too were caught up in the excitement of the game. Seto simply watched and didn't call attention to himself.

What other archetypes could use Synchro monsters? Dinosaurs, spellcasters, zombies...He realised that he was thinking about Bakura's deck again. He redirected his thoughts down the proper lines: Bakura could be set to designing some Synchro and Tuner monsters of the types he usually created. If they would fit in Bakura's own deck, so much the better. He preferred a designer to have personal stake in his work.

So his day was still productive, and not entirely wasted in uncomfortable thoughts about how he had behaved - and, for that matter, how Bakura had behaved - last night. He received yet another flowery e-mail from Pegasus, littered with Anglicisms as always. Seto had of course been tutored to fluency in English by the time he was fifteen, but Pegasus' gratuitous use of words that they both knew perfectly well he could have translated into Japanese made Seto grind his teeth again. At least Mokuba (so he said) found it entertaining.

By the time the car pulled into the Kaiba drive, dusk was beginning to fall, lending the sky a faintly purple cast. Seto took off his shoes in the entryway, listening for some sound. But the house was silent. Of course it was: since Mokuba was at judo, there was nobody about but Tsuchiyo-san. Seto went to find her in the kitchen.

He found Tsuchiyo-san making pork udon. Normally it would be Mokuba who made the everyday enquiries after her husband's health, but Mokuba wasn't there, and some dusty vestige of courtesy compelled Seto to say,

"Tsuchiyo-san, I hope your husband is well."

"Oh yes, he's much better. He's healthy as a horse usually! It was just one of those one-day things, you know."

Seto grunted agreement. Mokuba had had a few twenty-four hour bugs in his time. Once Seto had hired Tsuchiyo-san on as a housekeeper, she had helped nurse him through them. Seto himself never got sick. Mokuba had once suggested that germs were too scared to infect him.

He returned to the living room and sat in his usual chair. Then he remembered that this was where Bakura had been sitting when Seto came upon him last night and made his ill-advised abortive advance.

'Stupid' was not something that Seto was accustomed to feeling. He didn't like it. He got up and went upstairs to his study, and tried to get some useful work done.

The car brought Mokuba back from judo an hour later; Seto heard its purring approach in the driveway. He stayed still and silent as the car door slammed and the front door opened. He listened to Mokuba taking off his shoes, then sliding down the hallway to the kitchen, to Tsuchiyo-san. He listened to the indistinct sound of their chatter for several minutes.

Then he returned to his work. There were plans to hire another research and development engineer, and after the success Kaiba Corp had had with Lindgren, Seto was again looking abroad. He had ambitions to expand in the US, and a foreign point of view would be useful.

Bakura's sparse file - now looking less sparse after a few months of employment - contained a note on his two years spent abroad in England, which Seto had picked up from reading the prefaces of his father's books. Therefore he, presumably - but Seto squashed that thought before he could even complete it. He needed to think less about Bakura, not start enquiring after his childhood. Seto remembered all too well what that had led to the last time.

Footsteps on the stairs. Mokuba must be coming up to tell him that dinner was ready.

"Seto!" Mokuba exclaimed cheerfully, poking his head around the doorframe. Judo always put him in a good mood. "I'm home!"

"Welcome back." Seto stood up from his desk chair. "I'll come down for dinner."

"It's something with rice, I wasn't paying attention, but it smells _really_ good!"

And it tasted very good too, as they both discovered. They ate in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts, until Mokuba suddenly said,

"Seto...do you think Bakura..." He picked at his rice. "I liked having him here," he said at last, a little sulkily.

"He was a good houseguest," Seto agreed.

"But more than that! Seto, I know you don't want friends, but...didn't you enjoy talking to Bakura? I thought you did..."

Cornered, Seto gave a reluctant nod.

"We had some good conversations," he confessed. Unlike this conversation.

Mokuba relaxed at this hard-won concession.

"I'm glad. Well, I'm going to go round to his apartment tomorrow and see how he is - and how the apartment is, after the fire. Bakura said it was only some smoke damage and that it had been all cleaned up, but you know he's the type to say things are fine when they aren't."

Seto agreed that this was an accurate description of Bakura's character. He was no pushover, but he was shy, and not a complainer. He didn't want to bother other people. Seto, who hated whiners, approved of this tidy life ethic in others, even though he didn't share it. (He didn't _care_ whether he bothered other people).

He was thinking about Bakura again. Once again he applied himself to his dinner, and thankfully Mokuba did the same.

He managed to avoid thinking about anything other than German philosophy before bed, though his dreams had a distinctly erotic tinge that Heidegger surely hadn't inspired. The next morning he got up, got dressed, and had breakfast at an empty table before Mokuba came down. The silence was pleasant, as it always was to Seto; but the absence of other human beings, normally a relief, now felt a touch empty. How had he got used to Bakura's company in such a short span of time? Bakura had never been intrusive or loud, but still Seto felt his absence. He told himself it was only the lingering fevered delusions of sleep, and made himself some more toast.

"I wonder how Bakura's doing now they've cleaned up his apartment?" Mokuba chirped as the car wound its way through the Domino morning traffic. "I'm going to check in on him this evening, remember?" he added.

Seto grunted an affirmative. There would no doubt be an update on Bakura's condition over dinner, then. Seto would pretend he wasn't interested, but he suspected that Mokuba wouldn't believe him.

When he got up to his office, having send the car on its way with Mokuba still inside, he found a parcel on his desk. A small array of stickers marching across the top proclaimed that it had been tested for every dangerous device and substance known to man, and found harmless.

It was from Pegasus. Seto knew that just by looking at it. The package bore his over-ornamented scrawl, and the DVD case inside had a Toon Blue Eyes sticker on it. Another dueling challenge? Pegasus must be bored. Or lonely.

He could leave it for a while; but he enjoyed his challenges from Pegasus, and he _would_ welcome the distraction of a good duel right now. Besides, the DVD format was unusual. Pegasus tended to deliver his challenges in person to Mokuba, who put his judo lessons to good use and then relayed the challenge to Seto in turn.

He ran it through all manner of virus checks first, of course; and made sure that the DVD player not only had no connection to the rest of the Kaiba Corp network, it was so old that it wasn't even capable of forming one. Sometimes obsolete technology _did_ have its uses. Satisfied at last, Seto slid the disk into the drive and waited for it to load.

The picture that popped up showed - what else? - Pegasus himself lounging in his armchair, glass of wine on the table beside him. His hair looked especially shiny. He'd probably chosen special shampoo for the video. Seto had never met a vainer man. He ground his teeth lightly as Pegasus began to speak.

"Since kidnapping your brother has grown increasingly difficult over the years, I've decided to adopt a slightly _different_ tactic." Pegasus smiled his mocking smile. Seto began to feel a touch of unease alongside his anticipation. "You've never been one for _personal attachments_ , Seto." Seto's teeth ground harder at the over-familiar use of his name. "But a little birdie told me that you'd recently been kind enough to put up an employee whose apartment had been tragically damaged in a fire. An employee who had been, no less, a classmate of yours!"

The camera panned to one side, the perfect dramatic reveal - and there was Bakura, tied to a chair, but looking unhurt and unafraid. The shot lingered on Bakura for a long moment, as if encouraging him to show some suitable emotion: but although he was hunched defensively, if anything, Bakura looked slightly annoyed rather than intimidated. The camera panned back to Pegasus, who looked even more smug.

"I don't intend to do anything _too_ awful to your precious game designer; but you might want to hurry! It would be so unfortunate to lose promising young talent to a competitor, hm? I'm told I can be very _convincing_."

Seto had the phone in his hand to demand a helicopter almost before Pegasus finished speaking.


	9. Chapter 9

His urgency was, in the cold light of practicality, quite unnecessary. Bakura clearly was not in any danger. The worst Pegasus had threatened was to somehow steal Bakura away from Kaiba Corp to Industrial Illusions. Pegasus could be persuasive, and it _would_ be a blow to Kaiba Corp to lose a promising young designer to the competition - but Seto didn't plead for his employees' loyalty. Bakura could stay or he could go; and, although he couldn't justify the thought beyond a general knowledge of Bakura's character, Seto doubted that he would go without some serious pressure.

He could, therefore, have waited. Waited long enough to put Pegasus on edge, make him wonder that Seto might not rise to his bait. It didn't do to be too predictable. He didn't jump whenever Pegasus called.

All these thoughts occurred to him as the helicopter soared over open water toward Pegasus' base in Japan, a few miles up the coast from Domino. It was a vaguely Italianate monstrosity, ridiculously perched on a clifftop overlooking the tranquil sea. It was a beautiful spot, Seto would give him that.

The helicopter dropped him off on the terrace. Briefcase in hand, Seto strode towards the huge sliding glass doors that allowed entry to the house. He knew the way to Pegasus' duel room by now.

(An investor had once suggested that having a dedicated duel room was somewhat pretentious. Seto's look of venomous contempt for such a small-minded individual had made the man flinch so badly that he spilt his wine all over the tablecloth.)

The doors were closed when he reached the room in question, and he flung them open with a _bang_. Pegasus didn't look surprised. It infuriated Seto, but not much surprised Pegasus.

Bakura, on the other hand, nearly fell off his chair on the balcony - which would have been quite unfortunate, since he was tied to it.

"Company head!" he cried. He looked like he might apologise, but Seto cut him off by growling at Pegasus,

"So you've resorted to kidnapping my employees to force my hand!"

Pegasus only shrugged. Elegantly, of course.

"Your dear younger brother has grown too troublesome for the purpose." Seto silently commended himself for putting Mokuba into judo classes. "But then, when I branched out, I discovered..." His graceful hand gesture encompassed Bakura, who now looked far more nervous than he had on the video.

"I did consider Tsuchiyo Manami - such a dear little old lady, don't you agree? - but then you provided me with such an opportunity...Tell me, do you invite all your employees to stay with you for a week at a time, or just the ones you went to school with?"

Seto gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to stoop to protesting that Mokuba had made the arrangements without consulting him, and he wasn't going to address the intentionally filthy subtext that Pegasus' every mannerism conveyed. If he _had_ brought Bakura into his house for sexual purposes, it would still be no business of Pegasus'.

"Are we going to stand around and listen to you bloviate all day, or are we going to duel?" he ground out. He hefted his briefcase meaningfully.

Pegasus, the bastard, just smirked as if this was all part of his plan. Perhaps it was: Pegasus' plots were usually complicated beyond reason, though Seto might grudgingly admit to some satisfaction in figuring them out.

"If you'd rather not talk about your _relationship_..." He trailed off meaningfully. Out of the corner of his eye, Seto could see Bakura go delicately pink.

Seto had worn his white coat today, which conveniently bared his arms. He raised his forearm and with a swift movement extended his Duel Disk.

"A gentlemen's wager, before we begin." The hairs on the back of Seto's neck stood up. "The winner gets dear Bakura. As a game designer," Pegasus added, but nobody in the room could misunderstand his lascivious tone.

Seto scowled in fury. Rationally speaking, Pegasus wasn't actually proposing that they duel for Bakura's honour - neither he nor Seto would play a game for somebody's affections, especially when as far as Seto was aware, Pegasus had no claim on Bakura's. But the implication of it, along with the real threat to poach a promising designer from Kaiba Corp, got Seto's blood up.

"Let's duel!"

Pegasus won the coin toss - with one of Seto's coins, so unfortunately he couldn't accuse him of cheating - and Set a monster and two cards in his Spell and Trap zones. That meant that he hadn't yet drawn Toon World. The longer it took him to draw Toon World, the better the position Seto was in.

Seto barely even glanced at Pegasus: all his attention was focussed on the holographic projection of the game board where their tactics battled one another in the form of monsters. But he was aware, whenever he looked in that direction, of the mane of white hair in the gallery, and Bakura's regard.

Seto didn't ordinarily think of duelling _for_ somebody except himself and his company, and sometimes Mokuba when the occasion demanded it. But he was aware that he was essentially dueling on Bakura's behalf. It made him feel uneasy. At least he didn't have to use Bakura's deck.

Seto got his XY-Dragon Cannon onto the field on his second turn, and there was still no sign of Pegasus drawing Toon World. He could taste victory - but then Pegasus played Raigeki, and Seto hissed through his teeth with disappointment. At least he still had Monster Reborn in his deck. He summoned Vorse Raider and pounced on Pegasus' Crass Clown.

_Then_ Pegasus played Toon World, and things got more difficult. Seto found the entire Toon archetype so off-putting that he was glad it had never been released to the public. Then the conceit of having Toon monsters only able to be destroyed by other Toon Monsters...it was a clever strategy, but he had planned ahead. He might not have any Toon monsters in his deck (nor would he ever), but he did have cards to change that temporarily.

Pegasus destroyed his Vorse Raider with Toon Summoned Skull, and Seto gritted his teeth as he lost lifepoints. Toon Summoned Skull's empty cartoonish grin was just adding insult to injury. He set a Spell card face down with an air of what he hoped was overconfidence.

True enough, Pegasus seized on it and played De-Spell, revealing it as Monster Reborn.

"A good strategy," said Pegasus, patronisingly, "but so easy to see through, you know. You're very predictable."

Seto scowled furiously as Toon Summoned Skull took down his XY Dragon Cannon, then Toon Mermaid attacked his lifepoints directly. Pegasus looked tremendously smug.

Unfortunately for Pegasus, Seto knew that his deck contained only one copy of De-Spell. And there was still one Spell card on his side of the field.

"I play...Enemy Controller!" The card reared upright. "I take control of your Toon Summoned Skull!" The monster disappeared from Pegasus' side of the field in a shower of sparks, and burst into existence in Seto's Monster Zone.

Pegasus was still smirking. He could see what Seto could see: that Seto could use Toon Summoned Skull to destroy Toon Mermaid, taking another 1100 of Pegasus' lifepoints to leave him with only 700...but then Toon Summoned Skull would revert to Pegasus' control, and Seto would have nothing more to play: he had no more lower-level monsters in his hand, and no way to summon any from his deck to the field before Pegasus' turn, at which point he would be vanquished.

"From my hand, I play the Spell card Shrink!" He put it in his Spell zone with a flourish. "I use it to halve your Toon Mermaid's attack points!"

Toon Mermaid wriggled unhappily as her attack points shrank to only 700. Pegasus' eyes widened in outrage as he forsaw his downfall.

"Toon Summoned Skull, attack Toon Mermaid for 1800 points of damage!"

Toon Summoned Skull did. Toon Mermaid disappeared in a shower of sparks, and Pegasus' Duel Disk let out a low tone as she took his remaining lifepoints with her.

Seto let Pegasus recover his equilibrium - and balance - and looked up into the gallery. He wouldn't put it past Pegasus to have some backup plan. But Bakura was smiling and unmolested by Pegasus' goons, and had managed to shift his chair forward so he could lean over for a better view of the field.

"That was impressive!" he exclaimed.

"I know," said Seto, with every ounce of deserved pride. They looked at each other for a long moment.

"Gracious in victory as always, Seto." Pegasus' voice broke into Seto's reverie. "If you'll excuse me a moment, I'll ask my man to untie our guest..."

He floated off somewhere, but Seto, impatient, took the steps to the gallery two at a time. Bakura looked up, and the gratitude in his face was hard to bear.

Seto took out his pocketknife and cut the ropes tying his hands together behind his back. The bonds were only thin, and not difficult to cut - further proof that it had all been for show. Once Bakura's white hands were released, Bakura at once groaned in relief and pain, and began massaging his wrists, presumably to encourage circulation.

"Company head, _thank you_ ," said Bakura in heartfelt tones. Seto crouched to cut the ropes tying his legs. Only when he'd done the right leg did he remember that he could just have given Bakura the penknife to do it himself. He cut the rope on Bakura's left leg as well, and stood up. After a moment, Bakura stood as well, still rubbing his wrists. This close, the difference in their heights was noticeable - a good twelve centimetres, Seto would guess. Still, it was less than he might have expected. Bakura's shy, retiring personality made him seem smaller, as if he shrank in on himself to avoid unwanted attention.

"Um, thank you for coming to rescue me, Kaiba-san," said Bakura. It didn't escape Seto's notice that he was now _Kaiba-san_ once more. It also didn't escape his notice that they really were _very_ close, and if he just leaned in a bit he could repeat what he'd done last night and see if Bakura were still amenable.

He stepped back and cleared his throat.

"I came to respond to Pegasus' challenge," he said gruffly. "You'll remain at Kaiba Corp."

If Bakura were concerned by having his prospective employer challenge his current one to a duel in order to poach him professionally, he made no sign of it. He still looked happy that Seto had come for him. His smile made him even lovelier than usual.

"I'm glad," he said softly, and continued to look up into Seto's eyes. Was he being deliberately seductive? If so, it was working.

Seto came back to himself. They were still in Pegasus' house. Pegasus had disappeared, possibly to summon a butler to fetch convivial drinks. Seto was feeling smug enough about his latest win that he would enjoy the chance to lounge in a chair and lord it over Pegasus; but he also, for no good reason, wanted to get Bakura out of there.

"Won't you have a seat in the library, gentlemen?" Pegasus had reappeared soundlessly. Seto just managed not to jump. He exchanged a glance with Bakura, and they both followed their host through into what did indeed appear to be the library. Seto spotted several books on art, their titles in English and German.

Once they had settled themselves - not without a certain wariness - into their respective chairs and sofas, a man in a dark suit of such exquisite neatness that Seto suspected him of using a ruler handed them plum wine with ice.

"I apologise," said Pegasus to Bakura. "I had to make a guess at what you'd drink."

"Well, I, I don't-"

"Yes, that's what I guessed." And Pegasus smiled so charmingly that Bakura evidently didn't feel he could take any offense. Seto wasn't inclined to take any on his behalf: he _did_ look like a lightweight. (Seto himself would also look a fool, given that he always drank the same when he came to duel Pegasus).

"It's such a shame to have lost you to Kaiba Corp." Pegasus was addressing Bakura, leaning forward in his chair. Bakura, perched upright on one end of his chaise longue, smiled nervously at this flattery.

"That's very kind of you, Pegasus-san," he murmured politely. Pegasus looked up and caught Seto's eye briefly, as if to say, _Isn't he precious?_ Seto stared back grimly and spread out a little more in his chair, relaxing in as smug a manner as he could. Pegasus was being extremely gracious in defeat - so much so that Seto suspected he'd had little emotion at stake on the outcome of the duel. Seto felt obscurely cheated.

"So, Pegasus, who are you going to kidnap next?" he inquired waspishly. "Do I need to put Tsuchiyo-san in for judo lessons too?"

Pegasus laughed, in a warm and surprisingly masculine tone.

"Yes, your dear little brother's judo has given my men quite the task! But no, I don't think we need bother the lovely Tsuchiyo-san." His glass eye peeked out from behind his hair. "I don't believe I shall need to _kidnap_ anybody, as you so crudely put it, in the near future. Though of course I'll still deliver invitations to duel through Mokuba, for old time's sake. Isn't he growing up well? So tall - so handsome!"

These words diverted them all onto the track of Mokuba, who was indeed growing up tall and handsome, in the view of his entirely unbiased older brother. He was also very difficult to kidnap now, as Pegasus agreed - and he was very glad that Mokuba so _enjoyed_ judo, yes, what a good hobby for a young man to have, Kaiba-kun. (As always, Seto gave Pegasus an unpleasant look over the diminutive honorific. As always, Pegasus did not care).

"... _Such_ a shame," Pegasus was saying, "that you decided to apply to Kaiba Corp, even after you won that little competition I put on a couple of years ago...Tell me, does Kaiba-kun treat you well? I hear he's an absolute _dragon_..."

Fuming at being talked about as if he weren't there (which was no doubt why Pegasus was doing it), Seto's back stiffened with offense and he opened his mouth to cut in with a withering remark about Pegasus' own business practices and general professionalism, or lack thereof.

"Oh yes," said Bakura, with only a slight stammer. "The company head has been very good to all of us, and my department have treated me kindly."

"I'm glad to hear it," murmured Pegasus, gesturing for his glass to be topped up - though Seto noticed that he had barely drunk anything. "What a kind company head he is, to have you stay at his house while your apartment was undergoing repair after that unfortunate fire..."

"Just as you said," Bakura replied, and Seto realised that he must mean a conversation before Seto had arrived. To think that they had had a conversation about him in his absence made him feel uncomfortably exposed. "The company head was very generous."

Seto wondered whether that was really all that Bakura felt about the brief episode. Though polite, Bakura was not especially closed-off or unreadable, or at least not to Seto. Without wishing to let Pegasus guess what he was thinking - he needed no more ammunition - Seto considered Bakura out of the corner of his eye and tried to divine the meaning behind his words.

Bakura just continued to look demurely and politely interested in the conversation. A little anxious, as shown by his stiff posture, but not afraid. Seto would characterise him as 'wary', which was a sensible way to behave around Pegasus.

As for what Bakura thought of him...Seto returned his gaze to Pegasus. He could only guess at that. Seto was not accustomed to thinking of other people's feelings, but could extrapolate from how Bakura had behaved over the past week that Bakura probably, for whatever reason, enjoyed his company. Seto, who didn't seek to make his company enjoyable in any way, was dubiously impressed by Bakura's lack of regard for his own tender feelings - the ones that Seto, less out of sadism than out of unconcern, tended to trample on.

But Bakura had remained quite unbruised, and Seto's own tender feelings were engaged in an uncharacteristic and faintly embarrassing way.

"Yes," Pegasus was saying, " _very_ generous...No less than Kaiba-kun would have done for any of his old schoolmates, I'm sure." This, as they all knew, was sarcasm. Pegasus' voice lingered delicately, poisonously, over the word 'schoolmates'. Seto glared at him, then decided to leave with his dignity still mostly intact. He had just won their duel; he wasn't keen watch Pegasus recoup his loss in their conversation. Call it a tactical withdrawal.

"We're leaving now." He stood up and strode out of the library, expecting Bakura to follow. Sure enough, the _tap-tap-squeak_ of Bakura's soft-soled sneakers hurried in his wake.

The chopper was waiting for them: Seto had told the pilot that he wouldn't be long, and indeed he hadn't been. Despite Pegasus' windbaggery, the whole debacle had lasted only half an hour. Seto leapt into the open cabin, and turned to watch Bakura scrambling up after him. Some dim memory told him that it would have been chivalrous to help him; he dismissed it. Bakura wasn't injured, so there was no need to find such a ridiculous excuse to touch him.

Once the helicopter took off, they couldn't talk for the rushing wind. Instead, Seto looked out the window and Bakura looked at Seto.

"Thank you, company head," said Bakura shyly once they'd touched down. Seto had leapt out immediately onto the Kaiba Corp roof, and after a moment's hesitation Bakura followed him. Seto thought he might be blushing.

"It was nothing," he said brusquely. "Pegasus prefers to challenge me to duels by kidnapping my associates. It's unfortunate that you got dragged into it."

"Yes," murmured Bakura, quietly enough that the wind nearly took his words. "But I count myself very fortunate to have been rescued by Seto Kaiba." He was smiling prettily, and he had to push his hair out of his face against the wind.

Seto realised that they had been staring at each other for several seconds now, and spun on his heel. Bakura followed him again to the lift. As the silver doors closed, Seto's awareness of their isolation gave him the fleeting but strong impulse to push Bakura against the steel wall of the lift. No doubt he would wriggle deliciously, but he wouldn't resist -

The doors opened. Seto got out, and didn't turn around until they'd closed to take Bakura down to the design floor or wherever he was going.

This was getting _ridiculous_.


	10. Chapter 10

The next morning, his secretary rang to tell Seto that there was an employee to see him. It was Bakura.

As always, Seto's heart, so carefully hidden, seemed to turn over in his chest when Bakura entered the room on soundless feet, his steps muffled by the thick carpet. The face that he had first appreciated as 'quite pretty' now seemed incomparably lovely. Seto was clever enough to know that his affections were skewing his perceptions, but arrogant enough not to care.

"This is a delicate matter, so I want to make myself as clear as possible," Bakura said, as he stood straight-backed before Seto's desk. He wrung his hands nervously, then held his arms straight by his side. His whole bearing was one of resolution. "Company head, I have come to resign from Kaiba Corp."

Seto stared at him.

" _Resign?_ " he repeated, stupidly.

"That is the case, company head." Bakura was obviously fighting the urge to fidget under Seto's lambent stare. "This is for personal reasons."

"Personal reasons? Is your father sick?" Seto had the ludicrous idea of shaking Bakura by the shoulders. "Explain yourself!" He was standing up, though he hadn't noticed rising to his feet.

"No, thank you - I believe my father is quite well." Bakura looked slightly, charmingly embarrassed. "The truth is, I must resign because otherwise my behaviour will breach the company code of conduct."

Seto continued to stare. Breach the code of conduct? That mainly governed things like not smoking in the R&D labs, not sexually harrassing one's colleagues, and not revealing secrets to the competition nor anybody else. Bakura was hardly stupid enough to do any of those things - but had something happened between him and Pegasus during yesterday's kidnapping incident before Seto had arrived?

"Is this Pegasus' doing?" Seto demanded. "Is he trying to blackmail you? If that's the case, come out and say it!" Kidnap was one thing: blackmailing Seto's staff was despicable.

But Bakura only looked surprised.

"No, company head, this has nothing to do with Mr. Pegasus. Except," he amended, "that some of the things he said yesterday made me think about how I should conduct myself, going forwards."

Seto racked his brains for any memory of what Pegasus had said yesterday that might have led Bakura to reflect on his 'conduct'. He found nothing. What conduct did Bakura mean? Had he got a girl pregnant? This seemed highly unlikely to Seto for several reasons.

"What conduct do you mean?" Seto demanded at last. "Spit it out!"

"To put it simply, company head, if I act as I resolved to after yesterday's incident, it will come to nothing, because I will be in breach of the company's code of conduct - the section that states that a member of the senior leadership may not engage in a romantic relationship a member of the junior grades."

Seto furrowed his brow and recalled the section to mind. There was indeed such a clause, intended to discourage office romance and flirtations between the section chiefs and OLs, which Seto thought were distractions from real work, not to mention ridiculous. And Bakura intended to do something that would violate-?

But Seto Kaiba was not a stupid man, and when Bakura's face began to colour under his hard stare, he quickly grasped what was actually going on. Bakura had proved unexpectedly but delightfully bold. Seto, now able to relax a little, was intrigued.

"And what do you intend to do, once you've resigned?" Seto modulated his voice to calmer, more neutral tones.

"I believe that Mr. Pegasus would be pleased to have me instead." To Seto's eyes, Bakura looked a touch pained at the idea of working at Industrial Illusions. "Please understand, company head, I am not at all unhappy with the work or the way I have been treated. It is only because of the aforementioned rule that I find no other choice than to leave."

"I see." Seto strode around his desk to confront Bakura more directly. There was scarcely two feet between them, but Bakura didn't back away. "It might be of interest to you, before you take such a drastic step, to know that as CEO of Kaiba Corp, I can, of course, let those rules be waived. At my discretion."

Bakura went steadily pinker. It was extremely charming.

"I - I see, company head." He cleared his throat and seemed to straighten up a little further. He'd found his backbone, then. "In that case, I would like to ask for your indulgence in this matter, because I have come to ask-" His courage seemed to fail him for a long moment, and Seto wondered whether he might have to step in and take more decisive action to see how far down the blush went. Judging by Bakura's nerves, one would think that he'd come to ask for Seto's hand in marriage.

But after faltering for a few seconds and staring intently at the floor, he seemed to regain his composure, and finally finished: "I've come to ask you to g-go out with me!"

Seto meant to say something cool, like 'Is that all?'. Instead, when Bakura glanced up at him shyly though his long pale eyelashes, Seto stepped forward, took hold of his jaw, and kissed him.

It was very chaste, as these things went. Bakura's slight frame trembled against him, and his arms wound tightly around Seto's waist. Seto's pulse was in his ears, lightning went up his spine, and he was seized with the powerful urge to crush Bakura to him and not let go. He kissed Bakura harder, and Bakura melted beneath him. His mouth was yielding and sweet, and when he parted his soft lips his breath tasted faintly of mint.

Seto released his mouth and, with their breath still intermingling, said:

"I have a better idea. _You_ go out with _me_."

Bakura, in no fit state to quibble over semantics, breathed:

" _Yes, Kaiba-san._ "

And then they kissed again, more familiarly. And, proving the point of that code of conduct, neither got a jot of sensible work done all morning.


End file.
